


Exploring time and paradox space - Sburb hits Australia

by Psiidmon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:15:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 25,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psiidmon/pseuds/Psiidmon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of the united states, a member of the australian media catches on to the internet's two latest crazes - and so, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation begins their Let's Play of SBURB.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brown wrapping, Glass box

Nancy was never an ordinary woman. She lived in a beautiful set of hills, in an isolated mansion well off the beaten path. She always had her groceries dropped off on a strict schedule, the deliverymen never quite seeing the rumoured insane young woman as they make their rounds.

On Nancy's birthday the deliveryman who drew the short stick found himself giving directions to another courier, this one carting a large dark brown box and several smaller ones - cyan, silver, a gray to match the stormy skies, and finally a gold package.

The pair left their relevant goods in the stables attached to the house, and as they left the grocery hire buzzed the intercom. The deliverymen walked back down the long driveway, missing a streak of white flesh and bright blonde hair deposit one last gift on the pile - a bright green envelope.

Twenty minutes later, the recluse slunk out of the main mansion. The movement of the door set off an intricate dance of mirrors and reflections, reversing almost imperceptably as the door shut again. Calloused bare feet walked confidently over the deliciously soft grass, their owner looking up at the stormy skies with a smile.

Nancy had more pressing matters than to wait for a natural shower. She began carting the six gifts inside, treating the biggest with uptmost care and reverence. Beneath her left breast, her heart was beating frantically - should she ration her gifts out or open her favourite first?

The debate raged inside her as she travelled to the bedroom with all the gifts, her personally-perfect reflection for once not drawing her attention from all sides. Nancy found herself unable to resist and unwrapped the large present just slightly, fishing around inside the box for an instruction manual.

Nancy buzzed with excitement as her hand brushed over the end of a long ponytail belonging to the gift's inhabitant, but she scolded herself and instead withdrew the elusive instructions, giving it a brief read.

'We have listened to your feedback', boasted the marketing department, 'and have given you what you asked for - a living, learning RealDoll(tm) experience. No more cold unresponsive nature! Simply fit the enclosed Lifetime Guaranteed fusion battery pack into your new partner's stomach and watch them come to life!'

The recluse tugged the rest of the brown wrapping off the large package, revealing a glass-eyed toy bearing her features, with a few minor changes she deemed unacceptable. For one, her doppleganger broke her number one rule: wearing clothes at home.

(picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

Secondly her synthetic brown hair was the correct length, down to a shapely rear. The only issue with the hair was that she did not have Nancy's own long briad nor her large ring she tied tightly within the end of her braid, causing a nice rythmic bounce against her buttocks with each step.

Nancy inspected the exposed stomach of her new toy, sliding the battery pack into a sticker-labelled hidden seam, peeling the stickers off as she lightly pet the taut skin flat. The light giggle coming from the toy caused her to glance upwards at the smiling face of her twin.

"Well, good to know you work at least." Nancy took her clone by the hand and led her to the bed, where she was seated. "Now, I'm guessing your factory settings are a bit lacking..." Nancy glanced at the pile of presents as her learning toy smiled at her.

"I can learn from you while you talk, since I am meant to be you I could learn your mannerisms."

Nancy smiled at that. "Oooh, you are a smooth talker. Alright, let's see." She gestured to the pile of presents. "Alright, my friends, top to bottom. First is Cho."


	2. Green folder, Burned CDs

"Alright, let's see." She gestured to the pile of presents. "Alright, my friends, top to bottom. First is Cho."

"Show?" The doll asked, reaching for a button on her shirt.

Nancy sat beside her clone and took over the task of undressing her. "Cho. She's a real sweetheart. A bit of a celebrity, actually, she started out behind the camera."

(picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

Three years ago, miss Chase-Smith was on assignment for Channel Nine: filming her more photogenic, black-haired journalist partner as she investigated yet another stunning example of tabloid reporting.

Naturally, this involved her co-worker shoving a large microphone into the face of a large barrel-chested tattooed man - an 'alleged' ringleader of a biker gang.

Her colleauge was swiftly knocked to the ground by the biker trio, the spittle-coatedmicrophone clattered on the pavement. Cho had to make a quick choice - film the assault, or assist her injured partner?

Cho has always been a creature of compromise - a toolbelt full of A/V equipment worn over a breezy sundress was always her filming outfit, the bubbly woman never having seen the appeal in jeans.

Cho found a compromise in her new choice, too.

Hand on the thick audio cable loop on her hip, captchalogued it and the microphone on the ground into her inventory, and from there a quick application to her strife deck - Mickind was her number one weapon now. Charged for battle, Cho then performed the most devisive move in her entire career.

She threw the hefty camera on her shoulder into the air.

The camera's gentle curve as it ascended caught the lead biker's look of demented glee as it shifted into a look of confused anger - transformation aided by a heavy microphone smashing into his forehead.

Pulling the mic back in hand, Cho felt the pleasant tingle at the back of her brain telling her the camera overhead was filming down her shirt over her blonde hair. "Cut that shit out!" She demanded into the mic, and of the advancing bikers.

 

"By the third time she'd caught and juggled the camera, she'd managed to peg two of the thugs in the nads." Nancy neatly folded the somewhat cheap clothes her customised clone had been wearing.

"It didn't matter to Channel Nine that the camera was unharmed, they still took the price out of her severance package. The payout from Channel Seven when they bought the story took the edge off, but they didn't want to hire her after airing it."

Nancy left the realdoll processing the story as she deposited the folded clothes into a rarely-used dresser. She returned, her doppleganger studying the way Nancy's calloused feet reacted to the freshly steam cleaned carpet.

"Of course, the ABC were impressed and gave her a reporting job." Nancy took the hand-delivered folder - the same striking green as Cho's almost trademarked eyes - and read the note Cho had written with it.

"Apparently she's got a live broadcast tonight. Nice little birthday present." She left the gift wrapped, as instructed. "Would you like to watch?"

Inside the culmination of Nancys' self obsession, programming was running numbers, eventually settling on 'flirty'. "That depends, Sugar, would she be watching us in return?"

Nancy froze. "I need a name for you."

"I am Realdoll Nancy."

The woman jabbed her finger into the realdoll's chest. "I am a private woman, Dolly. I always have been, and intend to be."

Dolly bowed her head. "Can we still watch? I would like to know all your friends." In some internal database, the text string 'just in case' was filed away for future reference.

Nancy frowned at the faux pas, but seeing the excitement light up behind soulless eyes was more than enough to bring the real woman's smile back. "Alright, we can migrate to the lounge once we're done with the presents."


	3. Cyan package, Dark jewel

As Dolly handed Nancy the cyan gift (a long, thin jewelery box), her hands came into Nancy's focus. Her fingertips - relatively smooth, the factory-made 'fingerprints' being a series of perfect circles. "Nice grip."

A smile and a hand lazily brushing up Nancys' front made for a non-verbal agreement. Dolly began busying herself with the task of dressing her owner with her new gift, a silver necklace with a small black gem. "I didn't really think Tom knew me well enough for this, honestly. We travelled in different circles in primary school, then he got expelled around the same time I began the homeschooling."

Bright eyes. The not-natural almost-blue of cyan. Decades ago, roving the classroom during a test, far better eyesight than reasonably assumed from a child.

(picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

Peeping came easy to Tom, he had always been frustrated about having things hidden from him. Comparing his own answers to the students around him was long behind him by the ripe old age of fourteen.

So was the simple peek of a dropped pencil and a skirted teacher - deemed suspicious by the time he was 9.

He had to put the reflection-of-students-in-polished-metal trick aside by the time his 'OCD' defence fell through and people questioned why a non-prankster 11 year old was spending so much time at the back of other childrens' chairs.

He got two years milage out of strategically placed ball bearings buried into the carpet, before the janitorial staff got a sufficiently obsessive junior member who pried each and every one out.

Which led him to his latest, riskiest innovation - the reflection from the glass enclosure of the class pet. The risk? The aquarium is seated at head height.

Tom had gleefully been using the enclosure to spy on his classmates for roughly three weeks before the incident. Their hidden thigh-flesh was under his purview just as serfs are before their baron, privacy holding no sway over the innate Right that Tom held dear.

Mary had freshly laundered white panties every day, contrasting with her tomboyish best friend whose own coloured undies never matched her socks and would often be worn two days in a row. Nancys' own lack of underwear, a rebellious innocent act of nudity. Geoff's angry face in the middle of a test... uh oh.

Shame, humiliation. The words didn't matter - they'd assumed he was cheating (a cursory glance at his classmates' tests showed that Geoff might have been copying from Mary, he didn't have the same detail to the work as she) and had no idea about the peeping.

The end result, however, was the same. Tom had been branded a target, and was on a short leash with expulsion in the other hand.

It only took three days from the alleged cheating before something blew up - Tom bumped into Geoff in a hallway, and the larger boy loomed over Tom's skinny form. A hand flew to Tom's collar, pinning him in place - the bully had vaccumned the locker door into his inventory, then assigned it as a weapon of choice for the encounter.

Tom blindly made the same move, his head impacting onto some clunky device inside the now-opened locker and scooping it inventory-wards.

Geoff was pushed backwards with a quick shove, and they each readied themselves for Strife - Geoff with a heavy wooden locker DOORKIND deck, Tom with a stolen synthesizer KEYBOARDKIND weaponry.

Tom darted in to make the first blow, slamming the flat back of the instrument against Geoff's stomach.

Geoff responded with a heavy uppercut, wood shavings coating Toms' shirt as door met chin.

Keys grasped for a handhold, high and low pitched synthesised goat bleats sounding out as Tom slammed the keyboard onto the top of Geoff's head twice, thrice, blood staining the black plastic.

Tom was found rinsing his own blood out of his mouth by a teacher shortly afterwards, and the second strike of retaliation earnt him a full expulsion from the school. Geoff's ambulance trip earned him a new girlfriend and one hell of a scar.

"After that little explosion Tom got some therapy, transferred to a private school and got really interested in electronics and art. It apparently pays well." Nancy absentmindedly fondled her new necklace again, a sense of reflective glory in his apparent success.

Dolly simply placed the the case aside, standing by to hear about the sender of the silver gift.


	4. Silver chest, Time-worn book

Dolly stood with perfect posture in front of her owner, constantly noting how the long-term nudist presented her body language. Nancy began to pace as she inspected the heavy silver jewellery box.

"Scott Woldfree sent this one." Dolly advised. Nancy rolled her eyes. "Of course he did. Ever since he bought that boat he's had a string of excellent luck."

Sonar arrays, maps of local sea beds, and a dart board all sat near the steering wheel. The helm also featured spiralling stairs leading downwards, becoming the iron centrepiece of the living room.

The tanned homeowner ruffled his black hair nervously, checking the pencilled-on scar on his forehead. The thick cardigan made him uncomfortable in the summer heat, his red and gold school tie worn askew.

But the camera filming through the bedroom door catches the chubby man's wide grin. "Jeez, Scott, already changing? You look good, but I thought you'd make a better Neville." "Oh, shove it Tom."

(picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

20:05 07/12/12

The camcorder swept past a magnificent sunset over the Sydney skyline seen through the lounge room's window, the cameraman apparently disinterested in its beauty, nor Cho's as she lounged with practiced grace on the deck. Tom panned over the flat screen TV and passed by a couple holding hands to instead focus on the snack table.

20:40 07/12/12

The next time the recorder was turned on, Scott held it at arm's length. "Hey Nancy, just saying 'hi' from the boat, I'm going to try and get as much of the catch-up on film as I can." Tom walked out of Scott's room, drying off his hands. "And we've got a surprise for you waiting. It's only a couple days out to sea, I stowed it away on a private buoy. So no spoilers."

Scott panned the camera to show the retreating skyline, Cho looking out the window. She sat up straighter as the camera panned towards her. "Hey Scott, want to see a trick?" "Sure."

Cho snapped her fingers as a bolt of lightning arced through the night sky, hitting a lightning rod on the top of a skyscraper.

The cameraman whistled. "How'd you manage that?" "Magic, dear Potter." Cho grinned, leaning over the camera as Scott dipped it down to rest at his hip.

22:32 07/12/12

The room was dim, the five friends now playing with Scott's karaoke machine. A dozen empty beer bottles on the floor around them, a stirring ballad of Rocket Man tempered by the collectively awful voices of the friends.

Dominique was laying back against Phillip's legs as they both sat on the couch, the latter holding a microphone for both of them. Tom's frantic air piano countered Cho's graceful swaying, and Scott on Cho's other side was grunting out lyrics while searching for the next song to play.

Cho squeezed Scott's shoulder. "I think the camera's gone and turned itself on again."

02:47 08/12/12

The camera switched on again. "Truth." Said Tom, lounging back in between an underwear-clad Cho and Phillip, who was wearing Cho's dress.

"What's your favourite camera you've worked on?" Asked Dominique, busy with dropping empty bottles into a recycling bag.

"You know I don't like talking about work. Dare." "Kiss Scott."

Cho glanced over at the camera and gave it a wink, as Tom climbed over her to get to the host.

Cho squeezed Scott's hand as the two men kissed. Once Tom came up for air, Cho piped up. "Penalty for not answering - I dare you to go fix the camera."

The camera engineer laughed as he headed for the malfunctioning battery-drainer.

11:28 10/12/12

The group were all dressed for colder weather, Cho taking up the mantle of camerawoman once again. Scott was in the water, swimming back from a buoy.

As he climbed back aboard his boat, he dragged a fishing net to the edge. "Gimme a hand, guys."

The group managed to tug Scott's find from the water - a swelled dark wood barrel. "Hi again, Nancy. I'm gonna need some time to clear your gift through customs." Scott said to the camera, gesturing to the barrel.

He creaked open the lid with a crowbar, reaching inside. "I'll show you half the gift now, it'll give you time to be prepared." He held out a papyrus-bound journal, protected from the water by the barrel. On the cover, a set of hieroglyphics.

"You'll probably get this on your birthday, so in the meantime - get yourself a 'learn how to read Ancient Egyptian' book." He waved goodbye to the camera as Cho shut it down.

Dolly rubbed her synthetic fingers over the jewellery case and the journal within, as Nancy inspected the other half of the gift - a face mask made of pure gold, almost identical to Nancy and Dolly. Only a few minor details - a scar on the chin, a slightly different shape to the nose - kept it from sitting comfortably on Nancy's face when she experimented with it.

"So did you end up studying the language like he suggested?" Dolly asked, treating the journal delicately.

"No, I thought he was kidding. How the hell could this lady look so much like me?"

"Have you never examined your family tree?"

"No, I was adopted. Oh, there's an idea - what if that's Cleopatra? I could be related to royalty."

Dolly took the mask from her owner, placing it and the jewellery box beneath the largest poster on Nancy's wall, the dresser almost a shrine to The Maltese Falcon. "Please continue with the stories, there's only so much time before the broadcast."


	5. Discrete box, Public servant

Nancy sat her store-bought lover down onto the bed and began to unwrap the penultimate gift in the pile - an unassuming rectangular box wrapped tightly in grey butchers' paper, several layers of the cheap material.

"Trust Dominique to cheap out on the wrapping." Nancy commented dryly to her million-dollar sex toy, the sun slowly descending into the verdant hills surrounding the mansion, all signed under Nancy's name.

"Oh?" Asked Dolly, practising her mimicry of her owner by replicating the way she sat on the bed during the previous tales of her friends.

"Poor dear's always been a bit quiet about her actual job, I think she might work retail or something." Nancy's nose wrinkled with her words. Dolly's mimicry of that gesture was hardly appreciated, the woman roughly pressing the wrapped box into Dolly's chest.

"She'd been unemployed for a couple of years, living off her girlfriend's back, but when I was inviting her out for coffee - and trust me, it's a pain to have to get dressed and head to the city - she had the nerve to have gotten a job just days prior!"

2003, summer. The weather was bright and the sunlight warm. Dominique had only just begun growing out her fauxhawk, and her dark purple-dyed hair matched her gray eyes well. "Yeah, I really enjoy it, I get to wear what I like." She explained, tousling the short locks with a grin, enjoying the contrast to Nancy's complete lack of make up.

(picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

2009, spring. Her hair was now long and naturally reddish-brown, tied in a long thick braid coming from the end of her brushed-straight fauxhawk. Dominique was touching up her lipstick in the bathroom at work, her purse sitting on top of her arm-length leather gloves.

Her corset was black silk, long ribbons acting as the lace. Her boots were long and high-heeled, her pale thighs contrasting to her black lingerie. Dominique finished reapplying her lipstick and pulled on her gloves, glancing at the clock.

She had two clients to juggle today,  a cute couple she had introduced to each other in a more relaxed setting two months ago. Unfortunately, while they had hit it off well enough to start dating, apparently they had not yet tried each others' bodies out.

2003\. "... so if you change your mind, I could easily hook you up with an interview for management at the call centre." Nancy said, her position as one of the decision makers in her company making it easy to manipulate various members of human resources.

Dominique shook her head, leaving an impression of her lower lips on her coffee cup. "Nan, I appreciate it, but I really enjoy the new job. 'sides, gives me a chance to play with my locked-in weapon."

"Why would you have a weapon at your job? Hell, I don't understand how violent you have to be to even use those stupid inventory or weapon things." Nancy scoffed. "Give me a handbag any day, better than trying to make a video game into real life. I mean, I could understand Scott using one, but you?"

"There is such a thing as a handbag inventory style. I've heard it's a bit crap though - everything has a chance of being a used tissue. Anyway, as far as the weapon cards go, it gives you instant aptitude with your chosen weapon." Dominique pulled out her weapon card - a simple leather whip. "I got this when I did some work experience on a ranch, made it easier to herd the cattle."

2009\. Dominique gently tied a blindfold over her brownhaired client's pretty eyes, her leather-covered fingers rubbing over the other woman's pale skin. Having stripped the other woman nude, Dom let the thin client stew with gentle leather touches - shoulder, side of her hip, back of her neck - before placing noise-cancelling headphones on the shivering sub.

Dom's presence soon abandoned her client, who diligently stood stock still waiting for her mistress to return, shivering more with excitement and nerves than any kind of cold - the hotel room was well heated and the day outside nice, though the only sign of the weather outside was a gentle breeze drifting through the carpeted hallway and through the open door. With no audio or visual stimulation, the librarian was wary of every movement of the floor. Was that vibration because of people walking by and staring inside at the ghostly-pale librarian?

2003\. "It's not like you need the weapon cards exclusively for combat, Nancy." Dom needled her friend as she sipped her hot chocalate through a straw. "Phillipe's got Quillkind and it gave her a few years' experience as a writer straight off the bat."

Nancy glanced around the cafe at that. "I thought Phillipe was going to be joining us today?" The relatively small crowd paid Nancy no mind, but she still felt it necessary to fiddle with the large heavy ring tied into the end of her braid, checking the relatively light metal for nonexistant impurities.

"She's running a bit late. I asked her to get a manicure for me." Dominique grinned impishly, seeking more chocolate through the straw. "Going back to my point about inventories - they give a lot more range of carrying stuff than just using a backpack. I can use my Balance modus to take two things at once, and I don't even have to be touching both of them."

Nancy followed Dom's pointing finger to an unassuming sugar bowl on the counter of the cafe, both inside and across the room. In a blink of the eye, a gilded set of scales had appeared, scooped up the sugar bowl, and disappeared.

Dominique grinned at her friend, holding out two empty hands. Once Nancy was watching, Dom's inventory flared up with the gilded scale again, delivering the sugar bowl and a discarded single-serve packet of sugar right to their table.

2009\. The librarian was sure she felt her mistress walk past her, but she simply bit her lip and stayed still, hands clenched at her side. The soft tinkling noise of her mistress' modus drew her attention as the headphones disappeared. The not-so-soft voice followed. "You've been very good, so I got you a present."

The thick black silk was replaced with golden air and the librarian could once again see. Her mistress wasn't standing in front of her. Her boyfriend was.

His neck had a collar, his flabby body restrained by a generously working corset, laced with elaborate ribbons. The ribbon also left the confines of the corset, a thicker length of the same material restricting his motions. One of the few areas spared from Dominique's expert bondage skills was the man's cock, fit to bursting from the view of his naked, nervous girlfriend.

  


([Larger size](http://i.imgur.com/jJ8f8.png). Picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help) as always)

Dominique lounged on a sofa seat, one leg over the arm and an ungloved hand at the plump woman's nethers. "Now, darlings... make each other happy." Her eyes glinted in the scales' reflected light as she dropped sex toys and whips onto the bed via remote. "And that's an order."

2003\. Dominique's phone buzzed. "Are you shitting me?" Nancy glanced at her friend inquisitively - it had been several hours, and Phillipe hadn't shown up yet.

"She's dumping me. Guess she preferred when I was a slave to her wallet."

Nancy swallowed her distaste. "Let's find a quiet bar?" She suggested, tenatively.

2012\. Dolly was chewing on that last bit of data. "You enjoyed the pub even with all the strangers around?"

Nancy shook her head, having a seat to unwrap the package. "Dom convinced me to buy out the whole place for a private party, actually. Really let me put my hair down."

Dolly watched the butcher's paper come off her owner's gift, scooping up the paper to fold it away for later use. Within the folds, Dolly found a note, which she read aloud to her blushing twin.

'Dear Nancy, Cho convinced me to get this for you while we were out on the town. Maybe if you're a little more anal you might be a bit happier. Love from Miss White and Miss Chase-Smith.' "Does Dominique often sign things with her last name?"

Nancy nodded, looking over the sex toy that her friends had colluded on - a 'rabbit' dildo, which looked like someone had taken a simplistic phallus and added an alien antennae to the base. 'With free lube!' cried the box.

Dolly took in Nancy's quiet shock and decided to bite down her commentary this time, making note that Cho felt it nessecary to send two gifts.

"Last gift, Nancy. Gold wrapping paper, someone's got your number."


	6. Late night, Gold eyes

"Last gift. Gold wrapping paper, someone's got your number." Dolly said, handing over the loosely wrapped pile of boxes to Nancy.

"Very funny, Dolly. It's from Phil, he always does things with a gold theme." She showed Dolly the name on her birthday card - Phillip Marigold.

Dolly read through the factory-written words on the card as Nancy ripped into the wrapping paper, pulling out numerous DVD box sets of her favourite cartoons. Get Backers, Lupin the Third, Detective Conan, and more all hid within the scraps of golden paper.

She walked into the living room, checking out the smile on both her face and Dolly's in the numerous mirrors along the sunny hallway. Her doppelganger was practicing Nancy's stride, and made note of the grand show Nancy made of bending down to place the DVDs and retrieve the remote control from underneath her large wall-sized television.

(picture by the amazing [Reine](http://cloofoofoo.tumblr.com/post/13458804787))

Nancy laid down on the couch and beckoned Dolly to sit with her back between her owner's legs, brushing the synthetic hair while waiting for Cho's report to air. "Phil started up an anime club when we met back in college, he really wanted me to feel like I fit in."

2004, Phillip's first day in an optional class for his business degree. Only one other student was in this class, a girl whose lack of makeup and relative ease in the small classroom drawing his attention.

(picture by the lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

From Nancy's point of view, the first thing she noticed about Phil was how big his hands were as he pulled a chair out next to her on the table. A buttoned up dress shirt complimented his rather full beard of blonde, and she took his hand and shook it as she scoped out his golden eyes.

"I know they're a bit weird but you don't have to stare so much." Phil said self-consciously as Nancy faded out of the difficult task of half remembered dreams.

"Sorry about that, they just seemed so... familiar." She admitted. "Maybe we knew each other as kids?" Nancy properly introduced herself, then the pair got down to the task of taking notes for the course.

A few weeks later, the pair were having lunch in Nancy's dorm room - she'd lucked out and gotten a room to herself.

"So am I right in thinking I heard you watching Evangelion last night?"

"Phil, how the hell could you have heard that? Your dorm is on the first floor."

Phil shook the window's key, ensuring that it could open no further. "I was grabbing a smoke, these rooms are too tiny. Anyway, I brought some DVDs up." Phil gestured to his bag, abandoned by the doorway when he first entered.

2012\. "Turns out Phil knew Dom, and he invited her around to my room a couple nights a week to keep me company, when we weren't busy trading DVDs back and forth." Nancy brushed a stray lock away from Dolly's eyes, staring overhead at her double's pretty face.

"We dragged the whole group into a borrowed classroom overnight once, Phil and I were the only ones watching the shows while everyone else either slept or played card games."

2005, hour 19 of the Great Anime Marathon. Dom had pinned Phil in a bear hug, even as she slept in their shared sleeping bag. Nancy sat a few rows away, keeping a whispered dialogue with Phil about the flashing animation on screen. At the rear of the spacious and dark classroom, Scott, Tom and Cho were busy with a game of strip poker.

A few hours later, the boys had returned Cho's clothes to her ("She always was awful at poker." Nancy explained to Dolly.) after Nancy shushed the scampering trio for getting in the way of the projector. They were now dutifully sitting and watching Nancy's favourite anime detectives, and falling asleep doing so. Phil's commentary had slowed down and we sounding more uncomfortable as he went, Dom's open eyes watching the room's four other occupants as she barely moved.

3 AM. When Dom ordered Phil to put on Ranma 1/2, her voice barely left her throat, let alone the sleeping bag she was sharing with him, but her lover withdrew himself from the warm confines of her arms to go turn down the heavy metal outro of the latest movie nonetheless.

Scott's sleepy mumbling of "I'm a cat." when the main character was entering a new martial arts ultimate move caused for a round of giggles from Nancy and Phil, and when another character was cursed to turn into one with a splash of water, Scott's repetition caused for a burst of laughter from the duo.

2012\. Nancy smiled, caressing Dolly's cheek. "Phil and I keep up with letters all the time, much more than the others. I should ask him what he did with the Ranma One Half set, if he was going for nostalgia with all those."

The television in the background switched from an in-channel advertisement for tonight's movie into the news. "Our first report tonight comes from station favourite Cho Chase-Smith, here to tell us about what the decimated internet thinks of the recent media blackout from the US." Nancy sat up, taking Dolly's hand as she watched the report.


	7. Fallen empire, tattered web

Scott swerved his houseboat around a large swell of water, listening to the news on a loud satellite television down in the living room. He had just over an hour to get into position.

Scott let a wave carry his home into a far calmer patch of sea, the wind and waves simply dying out in a 2 nautical mile diameter area around Scott's target.

He killed the engine and dropped anchor, glancing at his tested and true method of finding important objects - a map of the area pinned to a corkboard, with darts sticking out of it.

The news downstairs reached the weather. "The meteor strike that destroyed most of Washington DC has left in its wake a devastating heat wave. Reports from Canada and Mexico both collaborate a marked increase in heat, which could be reaching our shores as soon as tomorrow afternoon."

Scott frowned and looked out at the building storm outside his personal dead zone. He ran a hand through his hair as he reread Cho's last email - she needed his help for a report and would be calling him soon, and she wanted Scott to download a game in the meantime.

His internet connection was always choppy at best out on the ocean, but in the dead zone the lack of cloud cover helped him access a satellite connection that was already pumping the lifeblood of data into his computer.

As the news pottered along for the next hour, Scott got his satellite phone hooked up to a speaker system he had recently purchased and wired through the boat, pinning a small microphone to the larger fake one of the helmet he was wearing.

He was also wearing a ruffled orange tunic over a teal long sleeved shirt and black bike shorts, with a fairly comfortable belt covered in satchels - not that Scott used them for much more than storing loose change.

Fifteen minutes before the end of the current show, the phone rang. It was Cho. "Hey Scott, how's it all looking on your end?"

"It's all downloaded." Scott hovered his mouse over the completed files, a pair of executables called SBURB_SERVER and SBURB_CLIENT. "Did you want me to get started when you begin broadcasting or should we familiarise ourselves with 'em first, find out if it's a hoax or not?"

Cho's crackly voice beamed down through the satellite above. "No, Scott, I want the studio to see me learn as I go. You can practice, just leave me out of it."

Scott sighed into the speaker phone. "Yeah, alright." He ran the server program, but was greeted with a black screen with white text reading 'waiting for client'. "No dice, Cho. No tutorial mode here. Gimme a shout when you're ready."

"Mm-hmm." Cho mumbled into the phone clasped between cheek and shoulder. She was busy setting up the tripod stand for her camera. "I'll run it in a tick, just gotta field a call from the studio." Across the room, her mobile phone paused momentarily, annoyed that its owner had pre-empted the shrill reminder its speaker was preparing.

Cho swooped up the phone and answered it halfway through the first ring. "We're ready to go, Jim, just make sure the censorship delay focuses on swearing and not politics."

In the studio, the desk-bound news presenter read the teleprompter in front of him with a warm, five hundred dollar smile. "Our first report tonight comes from station favourite Cho Chase-Smith, here to tell us about what the decimated internet thinks of the recent media blackout from the US. Cho?"

Cho smiled warmly at her ex-channel-nine camera as it switched on, showing the green-eyed reporter and her edge-of-the-city apartment, with various trophies from Cho's active sports diet peppering the walls. "Good afternoon, Chad. Since the recent destruction of Washington DC from an apparently targeted meteor strike on the White House, there have been thousands of wild theories running rampant across the internet."

Cho's laptop sat ready on the kitchen counter behind her, a flowing skyscape (designed to hide the installation process of the SBURB_CLIENT file) danced and warbled its way into the camera's point of view, trying to distract from the conspiracy theories Cho was reading with a slight mocking tone to her melodious voice.

"Many of these theories rely on the footage of the US Secretary of State enacting an order apparently from the pen of the Presendient, written from his sickbed. The order was to shut down all internet services." Cho grinned. "Naturally, there was opposition to such an inexplicable order, and several US internet service providers are partially operational."

Cho retrieved her laptop. "The prevalant theory from surviving US citizens is that this program I am currently running, and its corresponding server file, were the reason behind the internet kill order, and behind the destruction of DC." The file reached 100%, and brought the computer to a simple command line prompt. "I have my good friend Scott acting as my Server today."

The screen read 'a SBURB host user is attempting to connect with you. Press ENTER when ready.' Cho tapped the button, then glanced over her screen. It seemed to not need any more input from the client, so Cho put her laptop back on the desk. "What are you seeing over there, Scott?"

Scott cleared his throat, then his voice crackled over the speakerphone. "Well, I can see you. Turn, ah... 63 degrees to your left and then about two and a half meters off the ground." Cho picked up the camera and pointed it at the exact location of Scott's viewscreen, despite his obtuse directions.

"If you can see me, Scott, what am I doing with my left hand?" Out of frame of the viewing audience, Scott viewed the isometric version of Cho's living room. "Three fingers up, one out." He played around with the other menus as Cho mounted the camera back on its tripod. Cho then ducked as a boxy green missile flew overhead. "Oh, you can see the cursor?"

Cho flipped Scott the bird out of frame of the film crew, then left the room for a moment. Scott responded by picking up the lifeline to the ABC studio and slowly manuevering it through his friend's hallway. The camera caught a mirror in frame, the formerly green house-shaped cursor now yellow while holding the camera aloft. Cho stood behind the camera and waved her hands around it, demonstrating its hovering to her audience.

"So, now that we have your attention with the reality altering technology, let me explain a little about the game, since this is a rare viewer participation segment. I've asked my colleauges at the studio to run copies of the server program, and they will be available to assist viewers while I prepare a video guide." Cho caught the descending camera just before it hit the ground.

"Sorry, Cho, I was looking through the available items. We've got a big platform about the size of a table, a bookcase-sized laser cutter covered in valves, a floor-mounted emergency hatch with a lid on the top, a desk mounted keyboard with a slit in it, and uh... a 'pre-punched' inventory card."

Cho nodded, and walked the camera over to her patio. "Sounds like priority one is freeing up some room." She kicked her deck chairs to the edge of the patio, gesturing to the invisible eye of the Server connection. "Go ahead, let's give the viewers a comparison in sizes."


	8. White cardstock, Perforated lawnring

Cho kicked her deck chairs to the edge of the patio, gesturing to the invisible eye of the Server connection. "Go ahead, let's give the viewers a comparison in sizes."

Cho filmed her empty back garden as Scott began to drop the various machines from the game's store into it. The well-maintained grass ruffled peacefully, before being crushed by first the bookcase-sized sewing machine/laser cutting station hybrid, barely ruffled by the barbecue sized typewriter station with its two small feet, and completely smothered by the large platform with a scanner on its side.

"Scott, be careful!" Cho winced as he dropped the 'emergency hatch' directly onto her card table she had set up, driving the plastic legs directly into the soft soil beneath, the weight enough to even embed it partway into the thick bedrock beneath.

Cho swerved the camera around to frame her face. "Please take note, server players - these items are very heavy." She retrieved her phone from indoors, and relayed Scott's advice. "And apparently the controls are very loose, so practice with other items... preferably inexpensive things, and not video cameras connecting to your local studio." She winked to the audience, then traded Scott's cursor the last free item - an inventory card covered in premade holes - for her lifeline to the studio. "Keep it near my shoulder in case you drop it again." She warned her friend.

Word came through Cho's earpiece that a commercial break was needed, so she took Scott's cursor for a walk to her office, grabbing some cardstock roughly the same thickness as the inventory cards, a pencil and a high tech calculator. She sketched the holes in the pre-punched card onto one of the spare sheets, then began trying to map out the location of the holes with what she could see of the card itself.

A series of yellow curves, familiar and on the edge of memory, covered just enough by the holes to obscure its meaning. On the back of the card, an eye-hurting internet captcha code, eight digits long. Conferring with Scott, the two of them began to nut out the relation between holes and code - and to the machinery that had already been deployed.

"So what's the actual name of the things, while we're off air?"

"Punch Designix is the one with the keyboard."

"Obviously related to the holes, and the code."

"Yup. Cruxtruder's the one on your table."

"Yeah, thanks for that. Sounds like it might extrude... something." Cho looked over the capped cylindrical device through her office window with a frown. "With the valve?"

"Try it out on cam later. The platform's called an Alchemitizer."

"That's an awful name. Something to do with alchemy, creating something from nothing?"

"Maybe. And then you've got the Totem Lathe." Scott brainstormed as Cho wandered back outside. 

The reporter toyed with the lever and valves - the lever dropping a sharp series of blades pointing down at the cylindrical pressure plates, which two valves extended towards each other, and the last rotated both plates simultaneously. "Looks like something that cuts into a tube-shaped totem. The symbol on the plates is the same as on the alchemy platform." Cho noted. "And the alchemy plate is the only one without the company brand on it."

Scott buzzed in through the speakerphone. "Can you test something with the cards? Try entering eight ones on one card, then eight question marks on another." Cho trimmed two pieces of cardstock to the size of the inventory cards and shoved them into the receiving slot on the desk-mounted typewriting machine. She smacked the typewriter around until it spat out the practice cards, the ones card having two strips of holes, contrasting the question card with 10 strips.

"Alright, that confirms it..." Scott walked Cho through the eight digit code he had figured out, the cardstock being punched in the same pattern as the pre-punched card.

"Nice one, love." Cho touched her ear for a moment. "We're coming back on now."

Scott steered the camera for Cho once again as she showed off the pre-punched card to the viewers.

She then stood in front of the table and explained how the machine's name had 'extrude' in it, before turning the valve. The spirograph-branded cap strained from something pushing against it from beneath, but held tight.

Cho pulled her old microphone out of her inventory and lazily swung it around in a large circle. "Well, it looks like a bit of percussive maintenance is in order." She sped up her spinning and bounced the heavy microphone onto the stuck cap, which popped off with a blinding flash of yellow light.

Cho shielded her eyes for a moment, before glancing at something out of frame from the studio feed - a pulsating yellow light was dancing across her skin. Scott dutifully kept the source of the light off camera. "Well, warning to our viewers - if you have epilepsy, shield your eyes from the sparkling ball that comes out of the extruder." She spun the valve on the machine now that it was free, and tall crystalline cylinders began rising through the open hole, tumbling out and onto the ground from Cho's over-excited spin.

She picked one up and showed it off for the camera, as well as the discarded Cruxtruder cap. "If I were to hazard a guess, this is the totem mentioned in the name of the laser-cutting machine - the Totem Lathe." She showed the inside of the cap, which was once again stamped with the triangular variant of the spirograph pattern. "Match the symbols."

As Cho began to walk to the lathe, Scott panned the camera to the rectangular displays on the base of the table-bound machine. There was a calming cyan timer, counting down from 01:05:43:52 one second at a time.

When Scott resumed his tailing of Cho, his finger slipped once again, dropping the camera onto the soft grass. The studio got a few seconds of a fuzzy patch of synthetic grass while Scott's cursor chased against the seizure-ball of game mechanics to reach the camera. The footage of the grass was replaced by first another bright flash of white, then pure darkness.


	9. Dark room and Panic

Darkness was unusual. Darkness was the enemy. Darkness was a power outage.

Tom rose from his bed, experimenting with first closing then opening his eyes, but the darkness was total. He elected to keep his eyelids closed for the moment, feeling out with his hands. He began running his hands over the bedspread he had just risen from, feeling the thick blanket he had apparently kicked off himself during what was intended to be a brief nap.

The texture of the blanket's undersheet was interesting, a kind of large-holed woven cotton deal. Tom didn't normally sleep on his bed, which was odd, as was the over-fluffiness of the pillows, something that his couch sorely lacked and Tom's neck was never the best off in that trade off.

The power was still out. The bed was inviting. Tom explored the room, walking slowly away from the bed until his outstretched hands reached a wall, or more accurately a wall-mounted screen of some kind. One hand still toyed with the texture of the cotton.

The screen didn't seem too worse for wear with his interruption, so he began exploring the inside of the pillowcase. The edge of the screen was dusty, so he preoccupied himself with cleaning it as he moved along the edge of the room. It wasn't the first screen along the room's perimeter, nor was it the dustiest. The heavy blanket didn't seem to have any way to access the inner feathered doona.

Ten dusty off-angled screens, three more pillows and an intricately cut lunar landscape in the bed's headboard later Tom finally found a wall switch, hidden between the misaligned edges of three different screens. He flicked the light on, causing the screens to light up - a large wall of screens, far more than the twelve his hands counted, stretched high to the edge of vision, where rectangles of light merged into a blurry blue haze.

Tom looked down slowly, something drawing his eyes to his hands. Blanket. Pillow. Pillow. Undersheet. Pillow. Pillow. Dust, and lots of it. His eyes travelled up his arms, to his chest - a purple tee-shirt with two short sleeves only. Tom turned away from his various pursuits, dropping the items, and looking up.

Seven Toms screamed at each other.

Tom fell off his couch, cracking his head against his desk as he stood up in the filtered sunlight.

He cursed and rubbed his sore temple, sitting down in front of his workstation. He glanced over his left screen, a maze of almost imperceptible moving pixels, several thousand live feeds from various hidden cameras Tom had developed and deployed across the city, and a hundred highlight reels including three edited loops of sex: public, hotel, and club bathrooms.

Tom yawned as he glanced over his CD collection - a large number of strategy games both real time and turn-based - then his eyes drifted over the plush trophy from his first strategy game, when he placed third in a fourth grade teacher-organised competition. He squeezed his Tanglea plushie to comfort himself from his nightmare, as he switched on the TV.

Cho's news report was just starting, and Tom kept one eye on the television. Scott's voice over the airwaves reminded him to check his right screen, closer to the television set - four larger spy quadrants, keeping tabs on four of his friends.

He never particularly bothered with bugging Cho, after seeing her reactions at Scott's boat party to being filmed - she kept stealing unnerving glances to his cameras, her smiling face to his secretive breach of privacy almost ruining the whole point of spying.

Today, however, he was able to spy on Cho by proxy - a permanent 'smudge' on Scott's current headset was actually one of Tom's bugs, currently giving him a server's eye view on Cho.

As Tom watched the footage in duplicate, he pestered Scott over a shared chat program for a link to the torrent. Scott's quiet keyboard presses in return helped his friend out, and Tom watched Scott send the links to the ABC IT crew over email. Shortly before Scott dropped Cho's camera for the last time, he was checking the studio's website for updates - Cho's picture was front and centre, showing off her report and marked as extremely important.

Tom's eyes widened as he saw just what happened to Cho's camera, but other viewers didn't have his web of connectivity - or any web connection at all.

Nancy was currently soundly panicking, only having the TV to comfort her. The view had quickly cut back to the studio itself, as the anchors explained that they still had Cho on the phone, but had lost her video feed. "In the meantime," said the male of the pair, "please visit the ABC website to download the two programs showcased - our IT professionals here at the ABC studio will be following Scott's lead and acting as your server connections." A poorly timed commercial break drew Dolly's eyes from the television.

Nancy was cursing, kicking her hard-calloused feet against her kickboxing set in her living room's gym. "Dolly, I'm fucked. We're fucked." She kicked harder and harder. "Did you hear what Cho was implying about meteors? This is important and I'm screwed and I haven't got an internet connection and I'm going to die and I can't be saved and I'm fucked."

Dolly moved behind Nancy and began rubbing her owner's shoulders. "Shh, it's okay. Cho's got us covered." She kissed Nancy's neck, directly on the patch of bare skin that mirrored her barcode's location. "Look in the green folder." She advised.

Nancy brushed a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, then hugged Dolly thankfully. "If you're sure." She murmured into Dolly's barcode, clutching the folder in her hand.

She extracted herself from Dolly's grasp and glanced through it, finding two CDs stamped with the logo she last saw acting as Scott's cursor; a small dial-up USB modem; a note with account and connection details; and a large piece of cardstock written in dark brown with 'You'll know when you need these'.

Nancy delegated Dolly to the setting up of the internet connection and installation of the discs, while she returned to the TV - Cho was back on frame, but the picture was somewhat better. "As I was saying, I knew I still had a camera around here somewhere." Her feed now had a rolling tickertape down the bottom of the screen, reading 'visit our website to contact a server'.

"So if you check through the incoming connections you should see a new studio camera connection- oh, we're live again?" She flashed a smile at the viewers. "It's kind of hard to tell."


	10. Yellow ghost, Scattered ashes

Cho checked her make-up in the mirror, glancing at the yellow apparition floating over her shoulder. She dropped a hand to her pocket, rubbing her fingers over the item hidden inside, using it as a focus point to calm herself down.

She slid her makeup kit back into her purse inventory, and pulled her weaponised microphone out again, turning to the yellow ghost. "Turn yourself on." She ordered it, before contacting the studio in her ear. "I found another camera, and it's broadcasting now. Yeah, like I was saying on the phone before, I knew I still had a camera around here somewhere."

"We're live again? It's kind of hard to tell." Cho embarrassedly smiled at the camera's lens. "While I was looking for the camera I got a chance to find out a few things. The game actually gives you a guide in the form of a spirit creature, which seems a bit contradictory to its apparent theme of 'Don't explain anything until after you've screwed up.'"

  


Cho dragged her cameraman over to the mirror again, catching the yellow-tinted studio camera in frame. Stretching below the upgraded camera's tripod joint was a ghostly tail, as if Casper the friendly Ghost had a love child with a sheet of yellow cellophane. The camera also had a teleprompter fixed on its front, with which it was giving Cho a friendly pep talk, the text on the screen mirrored to obfuscation.

Cho returned to the backyard, rolling up her sleeves. As she spun the valve on the cruxtruder's tube, Scott piped up. "We did some experimentation while we were off-camera. Show us the cap, Cho."

Cho's spun valve caused a crystal dowel to rise from the ink-black depths within the uncapped cruxtruder tube. She bent over, glancing over the day-and-a-quarter ticking timer but paying it no mind. She showed the green Server-logo stamped cap to the now-living camera, then spun the cap to show its inside.

"We figured out that there's a repeating pattern on all these machines," Cho explained, showing off a repeating set of criss-crossing triangles. "It seems to be all about these things." She tapped the thick yellow crystal tube. "Which, according to my Purse Inventory List, is a 'cruxite dowel'."

She carted the yellow-crystal item over to the totem lathe, manually spinning valves and levers to prepare the lathe for cutting. Scott took up the mantle while Cho worked. "We couldn't figure out what the point of this was, earlier, but it seems like you're able to clamp the dowel between the two triangle-marked plates and then pop a punched card into the slot."

Cho slammed the pre-punched card into the appropriately sized slot on the lathe, and watched as a laser cut down from the pointy needle apparatus, cutting into the dowel with varying depths, making for a bumpy curved totem.

The ugly, bumpy totem made its way to the alchemy platform with Cho's help, the presenter standing well back from the platform. She sought her pocket-bound comfort item, turning her attention to the platform and ignoring the robotic arm coming to life.

The arm that was attached to the triangle-marked totem pedestal scanned the carved dowel. On the large platform, a 150% scale model of a short-haired Cho appeared instantaneously, arms spread for a hug.

Cho faced the crystal-carved statue, her back to the camera. Her only motion seemed to be her hand, rubbing her fingers over her hidden memento repeatedly. Scott waited a few moments before chiming in. "The, ah, statue is of Cho's mother, Jane Smith. The way it's coloured the same as Cho's dowels and sprite-guide makes me immediately think it's part of some kind of... overly-personalised puzzle."

The two Smiths stood stock-still, staring at each other. The larger one's eyes were carved crystal, same as the rest of her, but still gave the impression of kindly staring down at her daughter. Her features were similar to the younger Chase-Smith, though the older woman not only had smile-emphasised wrinkles, a short pageboy haircut and sunken eyes, but she also had a cauliflower ear.

As Cho finally began to move toward the statue, each step the weight of three pre-prototyped cameras, Scott continued to explain to the audience. "Jane lost her left arm, and her favourite ring, in an industrial accident when Cho and I were ten. She died two years ago." Cho wordlessly hugged the statue.

The top of the statue began to blow away with the wind, small chips of crystal floating to the sky, as Cho hugged it. Scott's voice explained over the speakerphone. "Jane had requested that her ashes be scattered along her favourite beach." The statue's head and right arm were flowing into the air. "Hopefully the wind will take this version's ashes there too." The large Jane Smith blew away slowly leaving only her severed left arm, which Cho clasped between her head and shoulder, keeping the hug going as long as she could.

(picture by the amazing [Reine](http://cloofoofoo.tumblr.com/post/13458804787))

"Bye, Jane." Scott coughed out, Cho finally snapping out of her fugue.

Cho clasped the arm to her chest, and slowly slipped the ring free. The arm disappeared into nothingness, not ashes. The oversized ring looked more like a pendant, which Cho displayed to the studio audience.

  


It was an ouroboros ring. "Mum was always a fan of The Never-ending Story; she was able to speak to some friends-of-friends in the music industry to get a duplicate made by the prop department." Cho slipped the oversized ring over two fingers and clasped it tightly in her grasp. She then turned to the floating camera-guide.

"Right, you. As fun as that bit of unwanted emotional turmoil was, I have some questions."


	11. I'm an awful interrogator. I also have a premonition. - Cho

"I have some questions." I said, staring down the camera in front of me. The flush of his line of sight was entirely focused on my upper half - at least the thing knew how to film a report.

The teleprompter hovering unsupported in front of the join between tripod and ghost-tail filled slowly with his response. [Select a category.]

"What happened to you?" [For 400 points, 'game mechanics'. The answer is: This is the process of thematically preparing the game world and ending the Eternal Stalemate within.]

I looked over the merger of camera and ghost. "What is the point of the seizure-ball?"

[Partially correct. The right question was 'What is the point of prototyping the kernelsprite?'. Next answer: Because like a program, unlimited potential is possible, it only takes the right input.]

"Why is it even called a kernelsprite?" I asked without having even read the answer. [Correct. Next answer: To better represent the ideal within the prototyped object.]

"That would be... Why did you get an upgrade?" I guessed, the style of the interrogation already confusing me.

[We also would have accepted 'Why do you have a personality'. Our final answer for this category: Due to the programming in the kernel and the nature of the game itself.]

I frowned, the question completely escaping me. "Why can't you just give me a straight answer?" [Correct.]

"This isn't getting us anywhere - can you at least tell me if I've done everything necessary to save all our viewers?"

The camera responded by switching its teleprompter to a still image.

"I doubt having a lover involved is important, and the punchcard code didn't tell us anything. Therefore the answer is 'prototyping the kernel' and 'alchemizing the pre-punched card'." At confirmation from the camera, I spoke through him to the audience. "There you have it folks, that's all you really need to save yourself. I'll try to keep gathering information, and show you how to act as a server player in turn."

"Speaking of gathering information, what's the deal with the timer?" I asked, gesturing to the blue counter on the cruxtruder's tube that had held the camerasprite's kernel form.

The words filtered in. [Stare at it long enough and you'll find out.] I glared at the lens of the sprite. [Note: No sarcasm.] With a shake of my head, I glanced down.

I humoured the request, staring directly at the ticking timer. A tingle began to grow at the base of my spine as I watched the seconds tick by at a rate of one second per second. The rest of the timer, however, was racing down as I focused at the blue seconds receding from ten.

The colour of the timer changed, black digits on gunmetal grey. A glance above the nearly empty timer revealed it was 'time until reckoning', and as I glanced back at the timer it hit zero.

Suddenly I was outside, an infinite blackness around me. I was standing in a small valley, a metal vault entrance beneath my hard-shelled feet. Looking around I saw grey rocks, and for a brief moment I thought I was on the moon. Then I looked up.

A dollar coin sized patch of blue sky was directly above me, and growing larger as I stared. I was suddenly looking through the hatch door, staring outside, as the moon I found myself a passenger on began accelerating towards the growing skylight.

Surrounding the light were millions of colourful planets, reaching out off-white tendrils worshipfully towards the light, many not stretching far beyond their planet. As my meteoric steed approached the sky-hole, it glanced a blow against one of the tendrils - revealing that it was in fact a skyscraper, made out of a huge pile of family homes stuck atop one another.

The scrolling parallax background of summer sky swirled within its circular container as I approached it, the clouds wispy and agitated. A giant green spirograph appeared between the moon I was riding and the sky-hole, the logo branded on the side of the totem lathe.

Through the centre of the spirograph was an image of Earth from space, and shortly the moon sized missile I was riding flew straight through. I was glad for the vault I found myself in, seeing the debris of the destroyed house-stack floating away from the meteor.

As we entered our final, fatal approach to the planet below I saw the familiar shape of Australia coming up dead centre in the path of the meteor. The debris started to burn, flying plastic flamingos spontaneously combusting in the heat of entry.

My entire mind screamed white death at me, and I realised my eyes were still open, the hovering yellow camerasprite's central lens radiating the hot flush of concern.

This was the first time I sensed an emotion through my Reporter Sense, but something rougher was on my mind. "Go to commercial." I spat out through my dry throat.

"We've been in commercials for the last minute." Came my producer's voice in my ear.

"What. The fuck. Was that." I jabbed my finger at my game provided guide, prodding it on the mounting frame.

His teleprompter fizzed, then a picture of [Glenn Ridge appeared, his voice filling my earbud.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTh4IM8bBPw&feature=player_detailpage#t=74s) (youtube link to Sale of the Century)

"Who am I? I was born at the beginning and will die at the end. I sometimes fly, sometimes crawl, but I am always passing. When you look back from the end of the day, you may not recognise me as you once did?" The footage fizzed out again.

"What do you mean I won't recognise time the same at the end of the day?" The speakerphone trilled at my ear, as I glared down at the annoyingly blank teleprompter. I shook my head and answered the phone. "Cho here."

"It's Tom. What the fuck happened to your eyes?" "Are you watching right now?" "You're in commercials." "Not what I asked." "That doesn't matter - when you zoned out your pupils constricted to nearly nothing, then when the anchors started buzzing you on your ear a small red cog started growing out, covering half your iris."

  


(picture by my best friend, [Peter](http://pseudomuse.tumblr.com/))

I looked at my guide. "So when I had that vision I literally looked through time?" "I dunno, Cho, but listen - I'm going to try and get someone in, Nancy seems to be freaking out. Can you hold off bringing me in until I've got her safe?"

I sighed and patted the camera ghost on the top of its lens. "Sure, Tom, good luck. Since I'm done here I'm gonna solve the puzzle." I hung up the phone.


	12. Wash and Where

Tom glanced over his friends' feeds once more - Dominique's motorbike helmet was still safely in the storage locker at the hotel she was meeting her clients in today, which was one he never got a chance to bug. Phil was back at their house, washing up the high visibility gear of Dom's crossing guard uniform - his own was already hanging on a clotheshorse in the diminishing light from the brewing storm outside.

Phil's dress was one of his and Dominique's rarer simple cuts today, billowing around his legs from the house's multiple locked screen doors' breeze. Tom always felt that Phil had some pretty big balls to wear clothing tied to Dominique's wardrobifier - the high tech storage device used the same inventory system as the modus cards to make for easily changeable outfits at the touch of a button. The problem there was that Dominique had access to said button.

Thinking it over, Tom scrolled to some footage in one of his highlight reels - Phil had been visiting one of Tom's local supermarkets after work, his wallet in his hand, when suddenly his suit was replaced by a floral gown. Tom had long ago patched in the footage of Dom at the same time - she'd hovered her hand over the option to send her lover no replacement garment at all.

Tom mulled it over and rang Phil, since Nancy and Dolly were busy installing their copies of the game right now. "Hey, Phil, what time's Dom due back tonight?"

"She's with one of her more demanding clients tonight, so probably... five hours off?"

Tom checked the helmet camera again, frowning. "She gets in at eleven? Christ, it's not a politician tonight is it?" Phil laughed at that. "Seriously though, Phil, when she gets in it's important that you guys check out Cho's report from tonight. End-of-the-world important."

Phil rubbed his nose. "Yeah, I know, I'm just trying to act normal... but I can hear the neighbours watching it."

"What's your plan, then?"

"I'm going to act as Dom's server player, once Cho actually shows off how to do that." Phil looked around his house with a well-trained critical eye.

Tom looked over the other man's house through the camera. "Don't you only have the one computer there?"

"That's why I'm glad you called - how can I hack into the wardrobifier and use its computer?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that, Phil - I get the sense Nancy's going to need some help." Tom jotted down Phil's request on a sheet of paper, for future googling.

"Hang on, I thought Nancy didn't even have the internet?"

"Yep, that's going to be the first roadblock. Good luck being a cute househusband, Phil, call you within the hour." Phil laughed at that one, kissing the air in the direction of the receiver.

Phil hung up the phone and finished up cleaning Dom's shirt - one of the kids' parents had accidentally sprayed mud over Dom that afternoon when she was helping kids get home safely.

Tom, meanwhile, was back on the phone. In Nancy's mansion the melodious chime of her favourite actual-bells-and-whistles phone set drew her attention and presence to the entryway. 

"Happy birthday, Nance!"

"Uh, hi Tom. I'm kind of busy panicking here." Nancy rubbed at her sore shin, Dolly in the living room busying herself with wiping down the kickboxing dummy.

"Yeah, end of the world and all. So, you don't have the internet, let's get you set up with an ISP quickly." His cocksure comparison of Nancy's address with the local services was cut short.

"I have a modem." She toyed with the green folder, still in her hand. "Cho set me up."

Tom glanced at his monitors - Cho was standing in the kitchen, speaking into the camera. "She's busy on the telly."

"No, I mean, she gave me a modem for my birthday."

"That's a pretty shitty present." Tom grumbled, mentally adding a number to his list.

"It'll save my life more than your necklace. Thanks, by the way. She also got me a... nother gift. With Dom."

Tom frowned. "That's not fair, we were all meant to be getting you one gift each. Now I'm behind." The lists' numbers changed, Cho back on top.

"Tell you what, Tom, I'll allow you to save my life as my second gift."

"Well, if you insist..." Tom scrolled over to Nancy's rarely used office, tracking her clone travelling back from the computer. "Are you all hooked up now?"

Tom watched Dolly run silently up behind Nancy and take the brown-stained cardstock from his friend on the monitor. Nancy was explaining that she had the game installed and was in the process of signing in. "Good to hear, Nance. Once you're on, mash start to get us going. Ya got the room for all the high-tech crap?"

Nancy looked about the mansion. "I've got a few empty areas we can use, just follow my lead once you're online and..." She froze up on his cameras.

Tom glanced at his other computer, the one not hooked up to a nanobot legion of cameras. It looked ready to go, the server application patiently waiting Nancy. "Something wrong?"

Nancy was staring into a mirror - she had grass stains on her feet, sweat on her brow and not much else. "I, uh. I think I need to get dressed."

"Why, did you just step out of the shower?"

"No, I uh..." Nancy trailed off, toying with the necklace nervously.

Tom scanned Nancy's mansion for Dolly, who was busy putting a heavy metal cover over the girls' pool. "Nancy, let me rephrase it - if you don't get to your computer now and accept my invitation, you're going to have to sign up with some random asshole either from the studio or from around Australia. Would you prefer to deal with your lack of fancy clothing with a million strangers or a small group of friends?"

Nancy hung up the phone. Tom glanced over the cameras, before noticing she was visible on his server connection, standing in her bedroom with arms spread... and Dolly next to her. He pushed his chair over to the secondary computer and dropped the pre-punched card between the two girls, acknowledging their presence. Strangely enough, Nancy didn't seem happy with that response and was shortly calling Tom with a mobile phone, dug out from under the pile of wrapping paper.

"Well? Aren't you going to crack wise?" She huffed indignantly down the uncomfortably man-made machine in her hand.

"Nah, Nance, it's cool what you do in your own home. But you could've told us you had a twin sister. Weird tattoos, too, what's the one on her head mean?"

Nancy pointed to the barcode tattoo on Dolly's neck. "She's an android. I got it from that brochure Dom and Scott sent over from their trip to Sexpo."

Tom stared down at Dolly through the server window. "I hadn't heard anything about realdolls being able to emote like that - I always thought they were meant to be, y'know, posable sex toys."

"She's my girlfriend and-"

Dolly took the phone from Nancy. "Good evening, Tom. I've heard a bit about you today. How's your anger management holding up?"

"I build things." Tom replied, defensively. "What's it like being a robot?"

"What's it like being able to fix up a camera lens?" He glanced at the big feed from Nancy's necklace - Dolly was sitting on the bed, her soulless eyes staring into Tom's through the camera. The scars on Dolly's fringe were still fresh, cut into the fake skin.

Tom grimaced - he'd hated it when Cho stared into his soul like that back during the boat party, and he sure as hell hated it now. "Alright, you win. For now. Help me find somewhere to put all this crap."

Between Nancy and Dolly handing the phone back and forth, Tom managed to deploy nearly all the default machinery - the totem lathe perched atop an accidentally torn down punching bag in Nancy's gym, the new machine staring down the old and far more naturally made equipment.

The kernelsprite's birthing tube impacted with the floor and shattered a nearby mirror in Nancy's living room, which caused Dolly to spring into action to hold the flat screen in place, which was showing a bright summer's day out Cho's window.

Nancy walked Tom's cursor through the rain outside to Nancy's swimming pool, Dolly assuring the showering Nance that the pool cover would hold the alchemizer's weight. Dolly was wrong, and she was shortly drenched with a large splash of chlorinated water as the alchemizer sank into the water, having ripped a hole straight through the metal cover. She joined her twin outside to wrench the chlorine from her synthetic hair, as Tom used the cursor to peel the jagged cover up like the lid on a can of tuna.

"Alright, Nancy, can you captchalouge a rock or something? I want to test if the alchemy robot thing still works while underwater. Cheers for that, Dolly." Tom poked his tongue out at the server screen while Nancy took the phone. "Tom, I don't have an inventory. I never had."

"... Oh fuck."


	13. Cho: Enter

Scott laid back on his couch, watching Cho's report with his wireless keyboard and mouse perched on his homemade Hylian shield, resting on his lap. She was trying to figure out the puzzle of the ring, so to give her some breathing room Scott was trying to learn the limits of finesse in the game.

He was manoeuvring the various machines in Cho's backyard to practice the creation of items - having found that the cursor wasn't precise enough to mash the buttons on the typewriter, but a stick worked well enough to rotate the various valves and switches needed. He practiced with the two spare cardstock pages Cho had punched earlier to meet his theory, the ???????? card spawning a small metal figurine on the alchemizer platform.

From glancing over the 'made items' list, it apparently had eaten up most of Cho's current set of resources to create this small 'Monument to the Fallen'. His voice caught in his throat - not only was Cho's mother in the figurine, but Phil's stately father and reedy aunt were represented, and his own father was included - the muscular man had worked at the same factory since he was 18, nearly died when Scott was 7 in an accident but refused to change to a safer industry, and lasted 14 more years before a second accident on the same machine took his life.

Scott hadn't seen his father outside of pictures for 7 years, and the random appearance in this guesswork figurine was completely unfair. He picked up the Monument and dropped it on top of one of Cho's deck chairs, paying attention to her report again - she was standing in her kitchen, and when he manoeuvred the game window to keep an eye on her she smiled.

"Welcome back, Scott. I think I've got my personal puzzle figured out - and I'm fairly certain it's going to be different for each player." She held up the oversized ring she was wearing on her middle two fingers, chewing on her lip as she voiced her thoughts. "Mum lost this ring along with her arm at the lumber mill." Scott's face paled at the fresh reminder. "So, let's replicate the situation." She gestured to a blender she had on her bench, the brand name taped over with red duct tape.

Cho dropped a handful of used tissues onto the bench before retrieving what she was looking for - a gas mask. "If you've ever been on the internet, you know that you don't want to breathe suspicious dust - and I think a crystal-made ring dust counts. By the way, this is not endorsed by any advertising boards." She pulled on the gas mask and slid the ring into her blender, pressing the lid on tight.

Phil had just finished hanging up the laundry on his clotheshorses inside and was taking a moment to himself to sip a cup of tea before changing clothes. His ears perked up as he heard his neighbours talking to an ABC official Server on the phone, as Cho's report continued on their screen - they had a habit of turning down the TV instead of muting it.

He frowned as he heard Cho's voice waver under her fake cheer. "So, let's replicate the situation." Phil looked around the room, then down at his dress. He vowed not to let Cho serve him - this damned game seemed to be obsessed with running an emotional gauntlet on its players.

Cho watched through her gas mask as the living memoir of her mother began bouncing and juggling on the spinning blades, chips of the crystalline faux-metal flying off and adding to the whirling dervish, a subtle white glow growing as the twin snakes were devoured by the outside party of the blender.

The light grew to a blinding peak, the camera-sprite knowingly looking out the kitchen window as a number of things happened at once.

The storm outside receded rapidly, time flowing backwards as the dark clouds and lightning were replaced with the cloudless sky of a hot summer's day. A cricket ball ambled its way backwards across the window, coming to a rest high in the sky once the world outside hit the brakes.

In the reflection of the window, the camera-sprite had two ghostly apparitions split from its body - a light and dark shadow of itself. The shade of light rocketed through the kitchen roof, passing swiftly through the new sky, and through a series of glowing yellow spirographs hovering in its path.

The ghost split from the path of the symbols at the final graph-gate, veering slightly to one side - near a similar spherical patch of a cloudy sky that Cho saw in her dream, was a golden city. Jutting proudly from the city's streets were 6 skyscrapers, far taller than any seen on earth, each holding a large dark-grey and long dead orb at its peak.

The light-side ghost obligingly flew into the first orb, turning it a lighter shade of grey and glowing with a sketchy sense of camera-ness, the ghost's essence flowing through the orb and down into the tower itself.

The dark shade had taken a similar path, flowing first through Cho's linoleum flooring, then through the crust of hot stone and cold mirror, breaching the planet Cho found herself on through the other side. It spiralled into the pitch black sky seeking the golden city's darker twin - a city of purple and black, the colours of Cho's repeating dreams.

The dark-tinted ghost flew into its own tower, sitting pretty with its 5 sisters. The sense of pure camera-ness flowed from the lighted orb and down into the tower itself - camera-scented power flowed through relays and repeaters, beaming a sense of pure filmology to a variety of 6-orbed receivers all across the entirety of the purest black space.

One such receiver was mounted in the air around the head of a sceptre - one made of black marble with a small decorative orb at one end, and a replica of the glowing sky mounted in the air above its head.

The sceptre glowed as it received power, held aloft by a king dressed in the traditional white-trimmed black robes of his office. He peered at the changing sceptre with a grin, bellowing orders to his surrounding lackeys with renewed vigour.

Much like his chitinous skin, the Black King's outfit suffered a change with the influx of camera-ness - his robes rippled and the blackness peeled away, revealing a colourful underside and a clear, visible warning to his followers that the battle was about to step up.

His crown grew a red LED in the centre of its cross and a camera to its outer edge, flaunting the fact that he was recording the battlefield preparations. More small cameras began to blossom from within his outfit and his right eye shifted out of existence, replaced with a shining lens, beaming what he saw into the starless nether.

(picture once again by the always-lovely [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

In the cities of gold and purple, orb receivers in shops across the two planets retrieved the same change. Fancy dress stores, jewellers, surveillance specialists, butchers, genetic remixture services and hovercar dealerships all received security cameras free of charge, as did several spire-like apartment buildings across each planet's chained-up moon, where most of the local nobility lived, serving the Sleeping Princes and Princesses.

One of the Princes did not sleep all the time, however, in the Golden Moon. He had in the past been a cat, a dog, a heron, a Princess, and an ogre. Today, he woke to inspect the mounted orb receiver in his Princely Quarters. It was one that he had been gifted by a friendly local whose chitin was white, as was the case with a vast majority of the locals on the golden planet and moon.

Several motes of dust in his room had increased in size, becoming large floating spherical orbs. The prince was reminded of a game he had played quite recently, his body shifting involuntarily to that of a squat android. The prince cut a hole in the chest of his human-sized golden pyjamas to see through, the silver of the lights around the robot's centre body peering out.

The prince found himself standing outside another of the Golden Royalty's bedrooms in short order. The second royal had their bedroom sealed within a glass-walled enclosure in the centre of the moon's business district, a constant stream of white-shelled locals peering in at the uncomfortable sleeper.

The robot gave a wave to the bedroom's other occupant - a female dressed in the rare coloured robes of the noble class was performing her sacred duty of keeping the sleeper comfortable, fed and watered. She waved back to the only fully awake royal, a former charge of hers.

The Surprising Jokester was the name of the royal attendant who doted on her charge, sliding a water bottle's tube into the parted and parched lips. She poured the water in carefully, watching the busy streets outside through the corner of her eye. SJ shifted her foot carefully and pushed a button just as the other Prince departed, spraying the crowd with a burst of soapy water.

She used the distraction to wipe the clean-shaven chin of her golden-eyed charge, leaning close to the sleeper's ear. "Phil," sang out her familiar voice directly into his subconscious. "You are loved. You are NEEDED."


	14. Rain and Wires

Phil had finished his chores and was sitting cross-legged on his couch, simply listening to the world around his large open-air house. The birds had gone quiet, so he was able to hear all the way down his long country road.

Filtering through his meditative trance were a handful of words. One of his neighbours was yelling at her son. "We don't NEED that tED." It echoed backwards through his brain like a projector down a hall of mirrors, her voice changing to another woman's voice, eerily familiar.

"You're needed, Phil!" His aunt's shrill voice came, screaming at the back of his memory. Phil was in mid-air, having just come off the tyre swing in his backyard. The gold-eyed boy landed wrongly and stumbled, his foot driving into the muddy ground.

This wasn't how it had happened the first time he was seven. Phil limped on his sprained ankle up to his aunt, a reedy woman with greying brunette hair tied into a painfully tight bun with ever-disapproving grey eyes peering over small, oval glasses seated on her pointed nose.

She turned on her heel and started marching through the cramped house. "What took you so long?"

Phil didn't need to run to keep up with her this time. "I know what's coming." She didn't respond to that, instead leading Phil through hallway after hallway, everything slowly getting closer together. Phil kept moving at full speed, his injured foot screaming pain up his spine as his aunt's bun brushed against the hanging lights.

He had to stop looking up shortly after she inadvertedly dusted the cramped ceilings from spider webs, unwilling to watch what happened once the descending ceiling passed her head height. Instead he focused on the back of her flat shoes, always practical, always a dull grey.

The wall pushed his shoulder back, and he found himself swivelling to move sideways through the corridor, his lungs already gasping for air. The hanging lights were smacking him in the side of the head now, and it wouldn't be long before the spiders began nesting in his hair.

And then they were through the door at the end, Phil's small father working at a cramped desk in an overstuffed office. His aunt left him be as Phil moved carefully to his father's knee, the bloated man's coughing knocking one of the stacks of hoarded business magazines over and trapping Phil - this was different too. The first time, it wasn't Phil who had been trapped.

The darkness under the magazines drained his sweat away, a blurry image appearing when he blinked - muted colours, gold and white and blue. A voice from the background of his memory, someone often acknowledged but not on the same social rung, repeated the words and brought him out of his dream.

"You are NEEDED, Phil." He slowly opened his eyes and stood up, moving to his computer and reading up on how to hack into his long-range wardrobe. He'd pried the front cover off the atom-logo keyboard and was arm deep into the inner workings of the machine by the time he heard the next interesting sound.

The motorbike was loud and distinctive enough to be heard ten minutes away, so Phil took his time with installing the recommended Linux build on the house's second computer. He had put his tools away and was waiting in the front room with a hot cup of tea by the time Dom walked in the front door covered in leather.

She took the cup in hand, putting her helmet and the lid of the cup into her inventory simultaneously. She sipped at her tea appreciatively, squeezing Phil's shoulder. "He cancelled. No call, either."

He kissed his lover on the cheek. "Maybe his office got to him urgently. Cho's uh, found something." He pointed at the computer, sitting on the download page for SBURB. Dom got herself acquainted with Cho's report and with installing the game.

Dom was initially amused by the 'joke', but quickly confused by the appearance of the cursor and scared by Cho's partially relayed vision. Phil worked around Dom as an email notification popped up, moving the video around the new popup.

Tom had sent through, a little too late, information on how to hack into the wardrobifier. He went into a bit of detail that Phil had had to work out on his lonesome, and gave some tips on how to install files from CD. He also mentioned that Nancy's problems with lacking an inventory and the one-use punch card.

Phil shot back quick thanks in response and promised he'd try and help figure out how to help Nancy, then began to burn the downloaded files to a pair of CDs. The brewing storm outside was bringing a front of rain, roughly fifteen minutes away by Phil's ears.

The couple had installed their respective files to both computers shortly, Dom bringing out a leather computer chair for Phil to sit at while he practiced. Phil soon found that the game wouldn't let him move the cursor too far from Dom, so she stood behind him watching as he built out the roof lining of the wardrobifier overhead, just in time to deflect the first droplets of rain from the exposed wiring.

Dom moved back inside as Phil began setting up the various equipment - their large and roomy house afforded them plenty of room to fit the bulky machines. In addition to the basic setup that Nancy and Cho had deployed, Phil was able to afford the resources for a game-branded CD marked with a green hexagon.

It installed a program called 'grist torrent', which didn't seem to do much at all - it did show that three players of six were active, a yellow player with no resources to share, a brown player with a full set of 100 blue hexagonal Build Grist and 0 brown blocks; and Dom's own dark grey player showing a nearly-full set of build grist (890 of a thousand) and zero pink spheres.

Dom had released her glowing-grey kernelsprite while Phil was fiddling with her computer, and it was floating behind her shoulder as she approached him. "What are we going to eat?"

He glanced at their kitchen. "Well... you mean for dinner? I hadn't paid it much mind."

"No, I mean when we're in the... place. Wherever it was Cho ended up. Flying cricket balls." Dom waved a hand over her head, mimicking a slow bowler.

"Suppose we could just..." He glanced at the grey crystal dowel in Dom's other hand. "They make things, right?" He was already on his way to the kitchen as he spoke.

"I think so, if we know how to get the code." Phil was pulling fridge-fresh apricots into his inventory as Dom watched, the boring and work-approved Array modus flaring cyan light around his hands.

Dom handed off the cylinder and led the sprite out to the wardrobifier, dropping the otherwise useless desk-sized punch designix on the wet ground nearby. She dumped Tom's Christmas presents - a large statuette of his Aquarius zodiac and a novelty children's keyboard for his oft-argued attack modus - onto the ground.

With a twinkle of gold both the keyboard and card-puncher were swept into her inventory, and she soon dropped the latter beside her computer. Phil spun the chair around and began entering the code on the back of the apricot card into the machine, punching a spare inventory card he'd put in the machine.

Dom looked at the card, then to the computer. "Phil, forget the apricots for a second. Can you pick up a spare card for me and tell me its code?" He obliged, and then swore as he noticed Dom typing the code into an email to Tom.

"We could've told Nancy that half an hour ago." The simple code - 11111111 - beamed across to Tom's lair. Dom looked out the rear window as Phil returned to the apricot experiment.

"No, we couldn't." He looked up at that. "If you'd been any slower with getting us set up the wardrobe would've been fried by the rain. Then we'd be fucked."

In a bank with a six-orbed marker on the wall, a freshly-made camera recorded an unexplained deposit into an already overstuffed account.

"Don't be dumb, Dom, what're the chances?" Phil laughed as he made a 1-grist apricot appear on the Alchemizer's platform. He tested out the taste, and then compared the copy to the original fruit. "Tastes identical. I think we're set for food."

Dom dragged the glowing sprite downstairs, to the basement where her fishing gear was stored. A large net hung against the wall, unused since the week long boat trip with Scott last year. She pointed at it. "Right, glow boy, in you go. I want to do some actual sport in this new universe."

The sprite dutifully absorbed the essence of the net, changing from a ball of glowing twine into a ball of subdued, bound up netting. "Oh, rip-off." Dom grumbled to herself, dragging the disappointing net-sprite upstairs. "It was meant to get all... ghostly." She mumbled into Phil's neck as she wrapped her arms around his neck in a hug.

Phil kissed her hand. "I don't think it's such a big deal what you put in it." He handed her the pre-punched card. "Your game, your honour."

She broke the hug with a smile. "No, you say 'your honour' to the judge who stood me up tonight." She had soon slid the carved totem into its resting place on the alchemitizer and stood back to watch.

A giant-sized dull grey filing cabinet appeared, its drawers slamming open one by one. Once the top drawer opened, the others slammed shut at the same time, the bottom falling out of the drawer. An overstuffed and antiquated rolodex dropped into Dom's hands, fluttering through names until it reached 'Cho Chase-Smith'. A large tick appeared next to the name and the page ripped itself out of the rolodex, leaving behind an extremely large list of names.

Dom turned to Phil. "What's different about Cho from everyone else we know?"

He looked at the rolodex, and then at Dom. "She's in the cricket world?" The net-sprite bobbed vertically in agreement.

"Phil... everybody I know is in here." Dom said after flicking through the thick book of names.

He kissed her forehead. "I'll put some coffee on."


	15. Dom, Dolly, Phil: Contact

Dom sat at her computer desk, the giant paperweight of her entry item sitting beside the computer. On its monitor sat Facebook, MySpace, Google and her email account; on the writing desk that seated the punch designix was the Yellow and White Pages, names sought and highlighted.

She was balancing a hot cup of coffee on her knees as she contacted each person in her list, her mouth already getting sore from all the chatting she was enduring to keep both friends and acquaintances happy.

"Alright Anne, I'll call you back once you get into the game - good luck." Dom finished the call and pencilled in a question mark by the octogenarian Miss Teak's name in her rolodex.

Phil had tried to help out Dom at first, but once he'd retrieved both his and Dom's address books from the basement he found himself with little to do. He reasoned that the meteor-warning timer had a full day to go, so he may as well get some rest, and retired upstairs to his bedroom.

He changed into some light pyjamas (in the old fashioned way - he even had a changing screen) and laid down with only a sheet over himself, listening to the rain and distant thunder. As he drifted away from the land of the living, his other pair of eyes began to flutter open in the land of gold and light.

Their owner slowly sat up and looked around the gold-tinted version of Phil's waking bedroom. The large room had the same large windows, looking out onto the busy street of some kind of city centre. The out-of-place bookshelf seemed to be a holdover from when Phil was a teenager, as did the sock drawer in the corner.

Phil stopped the investigation of the room when he noticed a silver light shining in his peripheral vision. Stepping over to the window in that direction and peering through the crowd of white-shelled people outside (sweat beaded on the back of his neck) yielded a strange looking robot, holding the hand of one of the lobster ladies.

The woman slipped away as the robot changed shape, morphing like a cheap photoshop effect into a stub-horned, cow-eared, silver-eyed human in similar gold pyjamas to Phil. "Why am I dreaming about you, Scott?"

***

Cho had changed into a pair of shorts and a singlet and was walking barefoot across the beautiful world visible outside her kitchen window.

The new world that her house had shifted to had a sticky-hot sense of nostalgia, the scent of fresh-mowed grass sending her brain back to primary school. Cho meandered in a lazy path towards a shiny red cricket ball, hovering in midair over a gap between three soccer fields, the shade giving enough of a chance for a small clump of bushes to have grown.

As she got closer to the house-sized ball, she was able to see the fruits on the bushes - soccer balls, ripe for the plucking. She pulled one free from the tangle of leaves and gave the ball a test kick upwards, which rebounded off the cricket ball overhead very satisfyingly and flew off into the distance.

Cho's eyes paid attention to the cricket ball, however - it wasn't moving in reaction to the soccer ball hit, nor when she experimentally bopped the end of her microphone against its underside.

She broke a growing branch off one of the bushes and tied it to the end of her long mic cable, swinging the homemade grappling hook at the giant ball a few times, before managing to hook onto an unseen divot near the top.

Cho was glad for both the shorts and the reinforced, weaponised microphone cable as she climbed up onto the cricket ball. Once she was past halfway up on the ball, she was able to gain a bit of purchase on the gold stitching, making the second half of the climb far easier.

Her branch had actually caught onto a loose thread near the top of the ball. Unfortunately for Cho, there didn't seem to be any form of fairy at the top of the ball, especially not one in cricket whites.

She sat at the top of the ball and pulled a chilly bottle of water from her purse, sipping at the drink as she enjoyed both the tingling sense of her camerasprite watching her, and the hot summer air.

Strangely, she mused as she laid back for a nap, there didn't seem to be an actual source for the daylight all around her.

***

"Alright Nancy, I have the code. Just mash 1." Tom said from the hallway phone. She nodded and hung up on Tom, a towel wrapped around her head - she had time to have that natural shower she'd been looking forward to while Tom did his research.

Nancy carefully pushed the tape-bound and scissor-marked butcher's paper into the card slot, sighing in relief when there was a complete absence of burning gift wrapping. She carefully pulled out the punched paper and wandered over to the laser cutter station, where Dolly had already placed a crystalline black totem.

The black-grey kernelsprite seemed confused, hovering halfway between Dolly and Nancy, unsure who to follow. Nancy slotted the fake punch card into the machine, grasping Dolly's hand for luck as she watched the machine spinning the dowel and slicing an even cut into it.

The phone rang out in the hallway again so Nancy left the final stage of the alchemy to Dolly with a kiss, answering the light chime. "Yes Tom?" She said with a sigh.

Dom's voice was confused at first. "Sorry, no Nancy. Were you expecting a call?"

"Oh, not really. What's up? I'm a little busy here." Nancy's voce echoed down the phone line, colliding with a far more testy version of Nancy's words somewhere along the line.

Dom cleared out her ear with a cotton bud, confused by the echo. "I'm calling basically everyone I know over here. Did you catch Cho's report tonight?"

"Yup, Tom's got me set up. He dropped my alchemizer in the pool. We're testing to see if it still works right now." Nancy chewed her inner cheek as she glanced out at the stables where her groceries still sat.

"Oh, good, I'll give you a ring back in an hour or two, see if you're in the game. This dumb rolodex won't let me cross anyone off until they're actually, y'know, off-Earth." Dom stretched at her little information fort. "I spoke with your old tutor, Miss Teak, she's safe."

The phone beeped from another call coming down the line as Nancy responded. "Oh, thank goodness. Good luck, Dom, I'll get Tom to send you an email when I get in so you can cross it off."

The two said their goodbyes and Nancy answered the other call. It was Tom. "Nancy, I can't find Dolly anywhere. My cursor's anchored to you so I can't search your whole house."

Nancy couldn't find Dolly either but it looked like she had successfully made a captchalogue card, neither it nor the alchemizer platform had been ruined by the pool water.

Nancy slunk into the pool to grab the card, but when she saw what was inside she let out a short scream.

Dolly was staring out from the card, motionless and with dead eyes.


	16. Strife!

Phil was watching Scott through the glass wall of his gold-tinted room with a small measure of frustration.

The white-skinned chitin woman who had been accompanying the shape-shifting version of his friend had slipped into the 'sealed' room when the pair had been attempting to communicate through charades, and she tapped Phil's shoulder, his jumping making the ruffles on his princess dress shake madly about his slender frame.

"How'd you get in, then? Can I get out that way?" He asked, as he listened for any noise of moving air, finding nothing.

"Tiny passage. I'm very flexible." She waved to Scott, who glanced around on his side of the glass, trying to figure out where she went. He then turned into a black cat with the yellow moon of his pyjamas on his forehead.

"Show him in, please." Phil said, rubbing his forehead and sitting down on the bed.

After ten minutes of wriggling around tight corridors that could barely fit a large rat, the cat and the-"I'm sorry, what's your name?" Phil asked of the woman.

As Scott tried to untangle his back leg from the pink ribbon he now wore as a collar, the lobster-skinned lady replied. "I've been called the Surprising Jokester."

The Jokester and Princess watched Scott sort himself out and begin to clean off his messed up fur. "How'd you get past the bloody fan? My whiskers said I'd lose my damn tail."

"Magic, dear Luna." The Jokester replied with a wink. "Now that we're all nice and cosy - Phil, you can't leave this room. You're needed in here."

Phil closed his eyes and listened to the memory of sound, still echoing through his brain. "You woke me from the nightmare." She smirked in response.

***

The heat bore down on Cho as she napped, barely in view of the watching camera from her kitchen window.

Inside Cho's head, she slept as she always did, a slow-moving and peaceful wave of purple and black almost lulling her to sleep within her dream. From outside her head, in the land of purple and black, a black-shelled chitinous woman watched over Cho, who was staring unblinkingly at the ceiling.

The daydreaming Cho was... odd. She had a similar mode of dress as the other dreamers on the land of gold and white, albeit her pyjamas were a short-sleeved and short-skirted dress in deep purple, and the watching Handmaid had outfitted the princess with a pair of high-heeled slippers.

The black-chitin noblewoman dutifully dosed out eye drops into Cho's still-staring eyes, the bright green orbs absorbing the liquid.

Cho woke up with a start, blinking her eyes heavily and waving a hand in front of her face - she'd just dreamed a huge black mosquito was attacking her. She stood up on the cricket ball, suddenly remembering that she had planned on climbing it to scout out the world she found herself on.

She peered out at the distant landmarks - more sports equipment of scale unknown: a lacrosse net either buried in a nearby garden from misuse or a temple in the midst of a nearby forest; out past her house was a large wicket, visible over her roof.

Looking in the other direction sat a large cricket bat embedded in a border of light and dark green lawns. Past the barrier was- Cho blinked furiously, then felt her forehead for sweat.

It didn't seem to be an illusion, but past the cricket bat was a mirage. She could see the heat rising from a large reflecting pool of water, though with the light yellow sky it almost seemed to be the world's largest lager.

***

"Fuck this game!" Nancy yelled, smacking the side of the alchemizer with one hand, the other holding the laminated inventory card to her chest - the back of the card didn't even have a punch card code, just the swirling colourful background of one.

Tom was googling his keyboard off. "Okay, Dolly isn't the first to be trapped. The company that makes inventory styles sends out free ones within two to five business days of something important being trapped - pets and so on. They're universally okay once they are let out, so that's not a worry."

"Not a worry? The world ends tomorrow. Unless you can travel through time, Dolly's stuck!" Nancy cursed under her breath, holding the phone against Dolly's card.

Tom glanced at the feed of Scott's computer - he'd taken off his helmet before grabbing a nap, thankfully. Cho's strange summery world seemed out of place next to her synthetic lawn. "Well, we can meet up when we show up on near Cho, I think Scott has a spare modus or three he can give you."

Nancy shook her head. "That'd take too long. Just tell me the code for your one."

"No dice. Modus cards have their option screens on the back, designed to save space. They don't have codes." Tom looked over some more FAQs, before clearing his throat. "Uh, I have one idea..."

"What're you waiting for? Tell me, I gotta get her out. I can't meet and lose the love of my life on the same day!" Nancy bit her lip hard enough to make herself bleed.

"You can access weapon cards at any time." Tom explained, the sound of his old blood-stained piano keyboard twanging down the phone line. "But I don't think Dolly would count as the basic unarmed fighting style." Tom walked Nancy through how to assign Dolly to a weapon card, and the large list of available fighting styles.

"Don't use Puppetkind, I'm pretty sure that'd make her brain-dead." Said one of the weirdest GameFAQ subjects (Real Life -> Strife Cards -> stylesandexplainations.txt) through Tom's voice.

"Same for Dollkind and Blonanmlkind. Er, that's balloon animals."

Something was drawing Nancy's attention to the G section of the list and calming her down, something on the tip of her nose. "Gardenkind, Ghostkind, Griefkind, Golemkind... What's it say about that last one?"

***

Phil was sitting on his bed, Scott-the-cat curled up on his lap. The Jokester was brewing a pot of tea. "It just sounds so stupid." Phil grumbled as he scratched behind Scott's ears.

"The Minotaur is dangerous and knows the back ways through the entire city, Phil." SJ sipped at her own cup thoughtfully.

Scott, purring and half-asleep, made no comment.

"Yes, but using me as a bargaining chip? When you could go wake up the person he wants to bargain with at any moment?" Phil took his own cup with a smile and good grace.

"I couldn't. I was only able to wake you up because I'm a member of your noble house. And half of your associates live on Derse." The jokester put a saucer full of milk on the ground, which Scott leapt down to investigate.

"That's the purple city-planet. This one's called Prospit." Scott explained.

"Well, could you wake up the last 'associate'?" Phil pulled his legs up onto the bed, shifting under the dress to sit cross-legged.

"Not right now - she's in the middle of an eclipse. It's dangerous to be out and about - you can't tell reality from the visions in the clouds." SJ dropped a sponge onto the floor, glancing meaningfully at Scott.

"That's another thing that sounds silly. Why would the game give away events so freely?" Phil glanced out at the crowd outside, the fear in his brain distorting the number of chitin people watching.

"The Song." SJ responded as she took away the dirty cups. "It's... It's basically Time. The game loves predestination."

"I don't stand for it." Scott said as his paws pushed the sponge over the hardwood floor. "Imagine finding whatever you want just by taking a nap and looking outside. It's just... cheating yourself out of a good adventure."

"So you never looked at the eclipse while plotting your boat?" Phil poked his tongue out.

"I don't cheat." Scott's hackles were rising, the cat's spine standing to attention.

"Unless it's at Halo." Phil murmured under his breath.

"Fuck you, I'm good with maps." Scott jumped back onto Phil's lap, leaving soapy paw prints on his dress.

***

Cho was climbing down her microphone's cord from her midair perch when she felt it. Another camera was watching her, this one radiating pure malevolence. She closed her eyes to get a sense for what side the pleasant tingle of being viewed was coming from.

When she opened them again, feet planted firmly on the ground, she barely saw a blur of red disappear behind one of the wooden, leafy soccer nets. Cho deliberately turned away and made a show of untangling her microphone, listening to her inner sense carefully.

The little fanged red man was slowly slinking up behind Cho. He was dripping with thick fluid, leaving pointed arrow-mark blood red footprints heading towards Cho's house. A small placard hovered overhead briefly, naming the Plasma Imp, but a backhanded claw sent it flying upwards to embed into the underside of the cricket ball.

The lens that was the imp's right eye slitted a filter into place, crosshairs appearing over Cho's head. The imp shifted uncomfortably in its clothes as it prepared to leap.

Cho was dragging the microphone behind her as she walked lazily home, the heat still making her sticky. She still leapt into action when she felt the view move in her direction, and fast - kicking the cord out in front of her to begin pulling the branch-tied mic in her direction, Cho dropped to a crouch.

The imp sailed overhead, dressed in a pair of jeans, a red jumper and a messy brown wig. Cho was stunned at how shitty the costume was, and forgot to yank the flying branch and microphone down on top of the imp.

The imp bounced and flipped itself onto its bare feet to face Cho, as she shuffled the microphone and cord into and out of her inventory - it reappeared loose in her hands, giving her time to swing it up to a good level of acceleration.

"I get the camera-eye thing, but what are you meant to be?" She asked, almost rhetorically.

The imp's mouth opened and the sound of an old VHS played the opening of a television show in response:

[Warning: loud video link] '[This is an art attack. THIS is an art attack. This. Is.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFqCl_GvHe0)' It cut off abruptly as the imp raked its claws over Cho's forearm, having snuck close while answering her.

Cho kicked the imp away and swung the microphone cord around its neck. She checked on her injury as she pulled the imp back towards her waiting foot - the blood dripping out of the scratches was floating away from her with no respect for gravity, flowing lazily towards her assailant.

Cho stood heavily on the imp's back, yanking the microphone hard until she heard a sickening crunch. The imp lay dead under her feet for a moment, before its body exploded into a handful of game abstractions - Cho's build inventory received a hefty inflow of 4 cyan hexagon Build Grist and 2 pearly-white pyramid Plasma Grist.

Cho rushed back to the house and locked the front door behind her, the blood from her scratches still dripping out with zero gravity.


	17. Nancy + Dolly: Enter Ballroom

Nancy was standing in her room, looking at the posters and paintings she had hung up when a teenager. She lifted one piece of canvas from its hook, setting the picture down on her bed for a moment while she looked at the black kernelsprite hovering companionably nearby.

The chosen sacrifice was something Phil had painted, part of a set of paintings shared by the group. Scott had ran a weekly game of D&D throughout college and at the end of the campaign, Phil revealed his portraits of each of the players' most prolific characters.

Nancy had played an androgynous elf who specialised in ranged combat, and it was that aspect that she hoped would pass onto the sprite. She pointed wordlessly at the painting, turning her head away from the blinding flash as the rangersprite was born.

"Make yourself comfortable." Nancy said dismissively once she inspected the bow slung across her guide's back, making her way to the lobby of her house. She looked down at Dolly's green-bordered card, the chosen strife style on the back marked with a small padlock.

Tom had told Nancy that Golemkind needed a specific ritual to unlock it, but she had argued that magic was all about 'dancing naked in the mud' and given the card a bloody kiss to seal the deal.

The storm outside had built nicely, and Nancy made her way outside to try her hand at the Macarena, or whatever dance came to mind as the most appropriate. Wet gravel stuck to her heel as she walked to her garden, and the rich muddy soil piled up nearby.

Nancy stuck Dolly's strife card to her stomach with a handful of mud, which seemed to dry out and cake itself to her skin despite the pounding rain. The wet soil oozed between bare toes and the golden ring braided in Nancy's hair deflected the falling drops as it spun madly with Nancy's dance.

In the house, the ghostly elf was searching along the walls and floors for loot. It was sliding a dagger carefully under Nancy's favourite poster, loosening the sticky connection to the wall, but there was no safe hidden behind it nor any other wall fixture the sprite had investigated.

The plasma screen showed glowing yellow hands tying a bandage around Cho's physics defying wound, as the elf lifted the TV slightly to check behind it.

Out in the mud, something started Nancy spinning. Her foot half-slipped into a small groove and she pivoted faster and faster, the ring holding level as the force lifted her hair higher and higher.

There was a small tug on the end of her hair and Nancy suddenly... knew. She knew how much force she and her twin could take, how to manoeuvre and lever her around. In less than a second, Dolly was joining her in the dance, the clean doll's fingers intertwined with the muddy girl.

Wordlessly, Nancy shifted a single finger. To her delight, Dolly quickly spun the other way, her hand shooting out and grabbing hold of Nancy's ring as the spin continued. Dolly curled into a ball around the ring, and with a muddy squelch the golem let go, flying out towards the lounge room.

Dolly smashed through the plate glass window, startling the ghostly elf. It backed up to the shaking wall as the golem jumped up, laughing. She ran back out through the window as the Maltese Falcon poster dropped onto the spluttering sprite's head.

***

"Get yourself some arms, quick!" Cho shouted at her guide, blood rolling across her fingers and merrily ignoring her natural order to clot.

The yellow ghost flew into Cho's lounge, floating lens first at her wall of sport accolades. Its target seemed to be a full colour photograph of Cho, beaming with pride after having won third place in a ballet competition.

One flash of yellow later, the upgraded dancer put her new hands to use by clicking her fingers, a large participation ribbon appearing tied around her wrist. The Dancesprite leapt back towards the injured Cho, tying the ribbon around her bleeding arm.

(picture by the amazing [Reine](http://cloofoofoo.tumblr.com/post/13458804787))

The prize ribbon swiftly changed to a dull brown from the mixing colours, but Cho looked on in astonishment as the dancer's head shot a beam of yellow energy from her large lens. It passed over Cho swiftly and passed on its yellow glow, slowly refilling her depleted health gauge.

The newscaster looked over her twin carefully. It seemed human enough, although her exposed back seemed to have some metallic spots along her spine. "Can you fight off those bloody bastards while I take care of something?"

The spots on her back lit up and projected a hologram, some old footage from Cho's interview with channel 7 and other sources. It cut around radically to produce a sentence. "Of course, Mother. Tom is waiting for you."

Cho gritted her teeth - the sound bite of 'Tom' had been from her time on Scott's boat and was definitely not for the ABC audience. "Don't use footage from that day. I was planning on returning the favour for Scott."

"You can't serve Scott, he's asleep." Cho had a sense that if the sprite could wink, she would be.

Cho handed over her microphone to her twin and sat at her laptop, as the ballerina took up a defensive guard around the new server.

***

Scott hissed at Phil's TV, where his power-armour wearing Prospitian had just been blown up by an unexpected rocket. The Jokester sat demurely on her Princess's bed, watching his screen and mumbling backseat advice.

"So who made this little bit of propaganda?" Phil asked, as they fought their way around an 'evil' Derse-inspired map in the Halo clone.

SJ pointed out the window at one of the nearby skyscrapers. "One of the best human culture mimics in this quarter of the city. He helped me put together your bookshelf - cost me and my family a pretty gainpenny to make sure he kept the golden cities low-key."

Scott put his controller down, hopping up on SJ's lap to be petted. "I should probably be waking up soon, if Cho's going to be Serving for me." The Luna look-alike yawned.

"How long have we been asleep and about, anyway?" Phil asked as he tidied up the game.

SJ glanced out the window. "Three hours and twenty seven minutes. Your body wants to naturally sleep another four hours, nineteen." She then shook her head. "And I'm not going to let you do that, Scott. You'd die. Two players just isn't enough for a Land worth slogging through. Six is a good number."

Phil frowned as he glanced out at the blinding city of gold. "Well, I can't serve for him. And I was going to piggyback in on Dom's session, so nobody needs to serve for me." The jokester burst out laughing.

"Oh, Phil, good luck. You'll need it." She gave Phil a kiss on the cheek, then picked up Scott and moved to the grille in the wall.

Scott called out from where he had quickly curled around SJ's neck. "When you wake up, ask Dom to give my boat a ring, she can probably help me out."

Phil nodded, then laid down on the bed and tried to force himself to wake up. The Surprising Jokester and her feline collar slipped through the wall while Phil pinched his arm.

***

A long-fingered pitch black hand caressed a finely tuned bowstring. An impeccably cut suit was sheltered in an instant by an overcoat made of thick-woven leaves. A sleek black baby barely hidden in its hip holster. Sharp ears balancing the brim of his beat-up hat. A handsome face jutting into the rain, the cigarette dangling from his lips quickly soaking up the moisture and sagging limply.

The dames playing footsie in the mud outside didn't know it, but they'd need his protection if they wanted to survive the night, and it didn't come cheap.

"What's he mumbling?" The cleaner of the twins asked the other, the both of them with legs rocketing skywards and an undress leaving nothing to the imagination.

The muddy wannabe witch darted forward, tugging at my ear. I'm made of tougher stuff than that, and face her anger with a level gaze. "You didn't even hear me, did you?" I shook my head.

"What happened to you?" She apparently repeated, eyes running up and down my new look with barely concealed revulsion.

Dolly watched as Nancy put her hand over the babbling sprite's mouth and slowly calmed down the excitable creature. Nancy stepped back experimentally and watched the midnight-black sprite struggle to keep his narrative internal.

(picture by the amazing [Reine](http://cloofoofoo.tumblr.com/post/13458804787))

The elfsprite did look somewhat handsome, but his ego was already growing into a pain. He shared the ghostly tail of Cho's guide, wore a dusty dinner jacket and a overcoat made of living leaves, had at least two visible gun holsters and probably had a third secreted away, and on top of it all he had slung a bow and quiver.

His appearance had pulled the girls out of their celebration, and Nancy was quickly calling Tom back to tell him the good news. Dolly's new immunity to the inventory cards put her on card-making duty, and she prepared to put together the pre-punched card's totem.

Tom dropped the card, Dolly caught it, black crystal carved by laser, placed on summoning platform. A freshly showered Nancy brushed through Dolly's hair again as a huge wardrobe appeared, pool water lapping at its legs.

The wardrobe doors burst open in a splash of clothing, two mannequins inside continuing to exist as the wardrobe and miscellaneous wet clothing faded from existence. The crystal mannequins were modelling a tuxedo and wedding dress, and their stands were raised high enough to keep the clothes free of the churning pool.

The girls were able to move the dummies to dry ground, and Dolly immediately began dressing the protesting Nancy into the tuxedo.

"I'm going to overheat." Nancy complained, the jacket uncomfortable. Dolly was pulling on the many-layered dress and spared Nancy only an exasperated glare.

Nancy moved itchily to the kitchen, grabbing a pair of scissors. She dropped the upper half of her outfit back onto the mannequin and began carefully cutting the sleeves off. Dolly had left the room in search of something to do with her hair.

As Nancy donned the hacked-together outfit, she heard Dolly calling from the bedroom. "Go wait in the lounge, we have to do this right." She walked past her sprite, noting that Dolly had fashioned a quick white collar and stuck it onto him. Guide and player looked sheepishly at each other as they waited for the bride.

Dolly had set up Nancy's sound system with her most-played song, and the golem walked down the aisle to the slow section of the song. She was wearing the golden mask from Nancy's Egyptian counterpart and even in her rush she looked wonderful.

The ghostly detective walked the two women through their vows and ended his speech with "By the power vested in me by Skaia, you may now HIT THE FLOOR!" All three ducked down as the sprite's gun leapt to his hand, firing a warning shot out through the broken window.

"What was it?" Dolly's muffled voice asked as she tried to cover Nancy.

"Prowler. They ran off." The gun was stashed away, and the sprite hovered back into a standing position. "Ahem. You may now kiss the bride."

Nancy and Dolly's outfits glowed with black light as they kissed, the light ebbing outwards and outlining the house and grounds, including two set of boot prints near the stables. And then, in a thunderclap rushing air, a huge chunk of Nancy's farmstead disappeared from Earth.


	18. Nobles: Visit the Queen

As Nancy's house shifted to another universe, the elfsprite followed the lead of his sister sprite and sent a ghostly shadow in the direction of both Derse and Prospit.

The towers' second orbs lit up with an elf-eared head and crossed weapons - a bow and pistol. The respective receivers throughout each tower flowed with more power, beaming the essence of the elfsprite throughout the game.

On the purple streets of Derse, gun shops everywhere were receiving new inventory from their wall-mounted receivers. In addition to the camera-enhanced scoped rifles, the receiver now helped form high powered compound bows and ammo-regenerating pistols.

The golden city's many shops and homes shifted subtly around the wandering Jester and cat-shaped Scott, the noblewoman's ceremonial short sword changing into a well-polished revolver. Scott watched his favourite Prospitian costume shop gain a Skyward Sword Link outfit, including the three elaborate bow variations.

The pair took a brief stroll down the gigantic chain holding Prospit's moon in orbit, heading to the main planet and the palace at its place of honour.

As the wave of change rushed over the palace, various nobles who were working to coordinate the war effort against the tyrannical Black King felt their outfits shift and change - the type of costumes that could do this automatically were far too expensive for the normal class of Prospitian citizen.

A large and lazy noble strolled his way towards the throne, where the mastermind behind the Prospitian propaganda machine sat and worked all day. Unlike the rest of the changing citizenry, the Queen had the real deal: a golden ring that wrapped round one of her white-carapaced fingers, alight with two orbs.

The White Queen nodded towards the slow-walking man, as he deposited a large full quiver by the throne. He retreated at a faster pace as he caught sight of the approaching Jokester and cat.

(picture by the wonderful [Lissa](http://krabsnack.tumblr.com/post/13520367916/commissions-help))

The Queen's new pointy ears were adorned with small earrings, spinning slowly and capturing plenty of footage from their hidden cameras inside. Her left eye had been replaced with a lens, and she wore a tight-cut suit. So tight in fact, that her holster sat outside her pant leg, displaying her sidearm to the room at large. She had a bow slung over her shoulders, pressed tight to the throne behind her.

She beckoned Scott and SJ to have an audience with her, and Scott shape shifted back to his waking body. SJ trailed behind the prince, wishing she could will herself to be smaller.

The light voice of the Queen sank like ice in SJ's ears. "Should you really be out and about at this time, child?"

Scott chewed on his lip and glanced skaia-wards. "Well, I was already going for a walk when the eclipse started." His lame excuse petered out there as he noticed the changes to her outfit from their last talk. "Uh, are you finding the power set agreeable?" 

The Queen tapped her fingers lightly on the arms of her throne, and then sat forwards on the seat. "I pray every moment that I have no need to use it, child. You know the shortcut back to your tower. Make use of it."

Scott glanced backwards at SJ, and gave her a hug of reassurance. "Don't worry, I'll be in the game in a jiffy and then I can sleep all I want." In a flash of white, like a soap bubble popping, Scott disappeared from the throne room.

SJ faced the Queen, exposed and suddenly worried. The royal rubbed her fingers together contemplatively. "You woke the princess early?"

"He was needed, he could have died." SJ was aware of the nervous guards closing off the room's exits behind her.

***

Tom was on the phone with Cho when his sister got back home from the night's performance, hours earlier than expected. "Okay Cho, start us off." Tom said, putting the phone down on his desk. "Sup Wendy?"

His older sibling put her large cello case carefully down on her couch, and then collapsed next to it. "Cancelled due to the apocalypse. Had to walk home, there's no taxis anywhere. What the hell is going on?"

"The game that killed the US showed up over here, Cho's put a walkthrough on her show." Tom pushed the couch backwards with a huge heave, as Cho's cursor overhead dropped down the narrow lathe in its former spot. "And now that I've saved Nancy's ass, Cho's helping me get in."

Wendy's tired eyes looked around the rarely used portion of the house, as far as Tom was concerned. The upstairs area had its contents shuffled about to fit the various machines, although Cho seemed to have felt it necessary to double the size of the lounge room with her powers as a server, to accommodate the bulky summoning platform.

Tom scampered onto the couch beside Wendy as the cruxite delivery machine dropped heavily onto the landing at the top of the stairs, breaking through the wood and carpet to end up embedded halfway into the concrete. The blank timer was barely visible through the splintered floor.

He leapt up as Wendy woke up, and guiltily scrambled past the cruxtruder to retrieve her needed coffee. While she slowly dragged herself back to the land of the living, Tom and Cho worked overtime - her younger brother a constant flow of motion between the various machines. At one point he stole the thermos of liquid from her hands, replacing it almost before she had time to protest.

When Wendy sipped the mixture Tom had concocted - one part captchalouged coffee, one part energy drink, mixed in the thermos - she jumped up, spitting the awful taste from her mouth. "What the fuck, Tom?" She shouted, throwing the flask back at him.

His array modus scooped the projectile from midair and stored it on a card marked Nightshift's Friend, as he shrugged. "It woke you up." A purple kernelsprite was already hovering near Tom, and his pre-punched card was carving a totem behind him. "Help me choose a spirit guide; I'm torn between tossing in a stack of old RTSes or a set of keys."

Wendy rolled her eyes and led brother and sprite to the garden, where an oft-replicated statue stood. The concrete Venus de Milo was relatively armless as far as prototype choices go, and Wendy had already utilized her buffed Boypluck score to lift the hefty statue by the time Cho pointed out that it might need some way to perform first aid.

"Go find something, Tom." Wendy grunted as she threw the statue at the sprite, which obediently changed form to match the new data.

The stone-bodied sprite murmured words of encouragement to Wendy while Tom scrambled about the house. His first choice turned out to be the tentacled plush toy from his spy station - the multifaceted second monitor showed a decimated city skyline from his park-mounted cameras, many apartment buildings having fled the planet for the safety of the game.

Tom returned to find his sister and the Venussprite having a cup of tea together in the kitchen, Wendy helping the purple-tinted woman sip without prototyping herself again. Tom showed the two the Tanglea plushie, and the sprite nodded.

The sprite found her carved hair sprouting a thick mane of leafy, plush tentacles. They grew down her back, curling around her stomach and the stumps of her arms, a layer of smaller vines appearing in her fringe and casting a thick shadow over her forehead.

(picture by the amazing [Reine](http://cloofoofoo.tumblr.com/post/13458804787))

A thin shoot sprouted from one of the arm-vines and curled delicately around the teacup's handle. The shoot betrayed its strength as it lifted the cup to her lips. While she certainly looked beautiful, Venussprite's voice sounded like the drafty movement of air through an ancient and abandoned castle. "I don't know why you don't drink tea, Thomas, it's wonderful."

Tom blinked a few times, trying to figure out how he had understood words from a softly rattling chain and the rustling of leaves. He backed his way out of the room, Cho having provided an exit by dropping his pre-punched card at his feet. "Venus, could you give Wendy a quick tutorial on the game?"

As he walked away, Tom tried to dig the reverberating sound of a drafty, lonely castle from the back of his skull. The disturbing familiarity made him feel like he was in his deathbed.

***

Scott woke with a slump, oozing bodily off the couch. He grunted, rolled onto his knees and scrambled over to the phone.  While waiting to get through to Dominique, whose line was busy for some reason, Scott had enough time to fully come to his senses and wipe the sleep from his eyes.

When the phone connected, Scott blurted out "Wake up Phil." before Dom was halfway through the 'D' in 'Dom speaking'.

"Did you have a nightmare, Scott?" Dom asked as she pushed herself away from the apparently endless list of names. "It's half past one."

"No, I was speaking to Phil and... just wake him up, alright?" Scott fumbled with a pen, doodling a much smaller map of names, glancing at his computer screen to check on Cho as he wrote.

A few minutes of grumbling and complaining from the couch later, Phil grabbed the phone. "Why couldn't I wake up earlier?"

Scott drew circles around the names he'd jotted down. "Maybe it wasn't time? Dream shit's weird, man. So I think we might nearly be done with getting everybody into our session."

"All six of us?" Phil asked, thinking of the Gristorrent window he'd installed earlier.

Scott looked at his notes and scribbled down a bit more. "Yeah, all six of us. Which means all that's left is-" He paused and looked at the awful drawn lines he'd just scribbled down. "Joining up you and me."

(Crappy lighting and awful handwriting have only [myself](http://psiidmon.tumblr.com) to blame)

There was some muffled conversation from Phil's end of the phone, and Dom soon had grasp of the handset again. "You need my help, Scotty? Promise me you'll take me fishing?"


	19. Inner nature

The sound of shattering glass drew Cho's attention from her laptop. She dropped Tom's pre-punched card unceremoniously onto his kitchen table, before hissing down the phone. "They're here. Talk later."

She dropped the wireless phone onto her kitchen counter as she stood up, her microphone appearing in the blink of an eye, already spinning in a lazy circle to the tune of The Beat. Cho scanned her eyes over the familiar landscape of her kitchen, both ears and eyes straining with the effort of trying to catch something odd happening. The rustle of sheets moving summoned her to the bedroom, her mic swinging quietly and slowly as she poked her head around the doorway.

Another of the sharp-clawed imps was rifling over her freshly made bed. It had set a new yellow dowel on the bed and was preparing to attempt a magic trick, much like the be-suited stage magician the milky-white creature had imped its appearance from. Clawed fingers twirled a waxed moustache as Cho's projectile flew past the back of its head. A sharp flick of movement along the cord manoeuvred the heavy head of the mic close to the Pearl Imp's foot.

Cho jerked on the mic as the imp yanked her doona away, the combined movement tripping and entangling the beast within. Cho wrapped the microphone cord around her hand and clenched the head within her fist, flogging the trapped monster with as much force as she could muster, the memory of her first battle filling her throat with bile.

The dowel sat on Cho's bed sheets, unmoved by the trick. It moved now, however - lifted in clawed, red hands.

With a nod to his companion thugs, the imp with the dowel stalked forward. Cho was ignorant to his approach, lost in the act of flailing at the doona, which by now only contained shiny game-related baubles. The heavy crystal slammed into her left shoulder, a spike of harsh static rushing up her spine and making her scream.

Far too late, she jumped back from the door and her assailant. She noticed the camera-tingle coming from her four opponents' eyes for the first time, the imps dressed as workmen from the 1930s. Two of them held lengths of pipe (Cho was certain she heard her bathroom flooding), the big plasma imp had a cracked yellow piece of cruxite, and the last imp tried to look threatening by obscenely licking the butterknife he held.

Cho lunged past the thugs, her weapon trailing behind her like a cheetah's tail. The knife-holder slammed his pearly foot down onto the cord, which yanked back at Cho's arm. She immediately pulled the microphone back into her inventory, but the change in momentum still slammed her full-bodied against the hallway's other wall. The mirror down by the bathroom fell off, breaking the laws of convention by simply landing face down on the carpet instead of shattering into the required million pieces.

The combat shifted, moved, cursed and left a trail of broken knick-knacks en route to the living room. A fifth imp was investigating the entertainment system, and looked up from its tearing at the speaker cover with fabric hanging from its fangs. It ducked Cho's projectile, but the hastily thrown plug was aimed at the stereo.

She screamed into the mic, covering her head quickly as the feedback blasted her pursuers onto their backs. One ear ringing, Cho relied on her camera-sense to tell where her foes were, looping the cord around two of the downed imps and choking them out before being forced back by wildly swung piping.

Cho was momentarily distracted as she saw one of the dead imps explode into a few pieces of materials, and the plasma imp took the moment to fling his weapon at her, catching her hard in the stomach. She doubled over and focused on returning the favour, the electric tingles coming from her opponents serving as a crude radar as she kept her eye on the red bastard. A movement from the imp-eye-camera behind her made her glance over her shoulder for a moment, the butterknife imp registering in her peripheral vision as she swept the mic at the plasma imp's legs.

Someone, somewhere nearby, had either just cracked a whip or flown a miniature jet plane past at mach speed. The eardrum-shattering noise was so loud that Cho stood stunned for a moment.

Time seemed to slow down as Cho looked down at herself, a bloody hole having confusingly appeared out of nowhere.

***

Wendy and the Venussprite were seated at the kitchen table as Tom rustled up an extremely late dinner, the scent of grilled fish and sizzling chips filling the room. Taproots, small branches and a shower of leaves cascaded from the carved beauty's head, as a small parade of living shoots bustled about the living room.

The shoots were transporting and manipulating the pre-punched card, undulations making the hard stocky paper and large totem flow to the needed machinery. As Tom slathered the sprite's serving in rock salt, her roots had positioned the carved curio on the alchemy platform.

With a shudder, the house shook - a gigantic purple computer monitor had appeared half a meter above the platform, and landed heavily. A crack appeared in the glass.

Tom aimed carefully in the oven door's reflection and flung a knife over his shoulder. It impacted slightly to the left of his ideal target, but the screen shattered just the same. The taproots poked and prodded inside the screen, curling around the knife and the generated prize - a shiny bootleg DVD.

The impromptu meal moved to the lounge as four legs and one ethereal tail manoeuvred around disappearing broken glass, the sprite's long-range appendages moving the disc into the rarely used DVD player. The screen flickered on.

The Tom in the TV was young, wearing a torn school uniform, bloody knuckles and a guilty look on his face. His sister, legal guardian and adoptive mother were working in shifts to explain the severity of his actions. After a while Wendy decided she'd had enough of playing so many roles and thrust a bundled homework questionnaire into the teens' hands, sending him to his room.

Several handwritten courses flew by before Tom earnt the use of his computer back. When he first began to work on the CD full of coursework he found the wireless keyboard glowing with the dark green shadow of a strife card. The keyboard dropped from his strife deck after a moment, his hands sliding automatically and autonomously across the keys, answers flying across the worksheet before his brain had even processed what his eyes had sent to the treacherous appendages.

Tom wrenched his hands away from the keyboard, carefully deleted the cheat-filled text, and resumed the slow task of comprehension with pen and paper.

Several weeks later, Tom's attention was split. He had his right eye and hand working through troublesome English essays, as his left hand learnt robotics from a how-to guide his left eye was gleefully pursuing. Jump forward a year to find a pyjama-clad Tom sleeping with his eyes open in front of his computer, his treacherous body researching nanobot construction.

Autumn, and Tom willingly wandered through his neighbourhood on hard rubbish collection day. He vacuumed broken TV screens, computer monitors, vacuum tubes, and other sundry junk into his array modus. At home, his fingers flew across his weaponised keyboard, translating his brain's desire from concept to a working blueprint.

Assembled in secret and in fast motion, Tom's army of nanobots and their CCTV analogues in the work-in-progress Ubermonitor both grew steadily. The pseudo-albino scattered his robotic children throughout the city en route to work, and he settled into the nightly routine of city-wide surveillance.

The crystalline DVD stopped, returning to menu. A motionless Wendy, petrified Tom and silent statue all stared at the screen. Wendy was the first to rise, her beeline to Tom's inner sanctum only stopped momentarily by his attempted interposition. When she pushed him aside, mangrit flexed its ugly muscles and propelled Tom head-first on the plaster express to dreamland.


	20. Fall and trial

Wendy brushed an errant strand of hair away from Tom's forehead before gently holding an icepack from the household first aid kit against his bruised head.

Venus hovered nearby, the rustling of her leafy hair translating to "Do not worry, Queen Mother, I can handle it from here." A creaking set of marble arm stumps changed in Wendy's head as Venus stretched. "I will hold the fort. You have the right to investigate the Prince's room or Land as you see fit."

"Land? Where are we? I felt everything shift..." Wendy trailed off as she looked outside, a small blue patch of sky around the house highlighting the border of an equally small acre of soft red grass on rolling hills.

Outside that area burned a haze of purplish fog, beyond which the slowly undulating fields grew blue-tinted grass, rocks and even a lake on the horizon. Floating steady above the moving ground were a variety of buildings, outlined in red from the ambient glow of both the crimson sky and the red mists acting as markers to any observers.

([Full size](http://i.imgur.com/tDss3.png))

"The ." Venussprite explained in a revenant tone of tearing kudzu vine from rotting mortar. Wendy noticed a small village of wooden huts hovering invitingly beyond the purple borderline, a series of rope bridges dangling down from several points. She left Venus in Tom's rarely used bedroom to tend to the knocked out boy.

Venus watched from the window as Wendy stepped out onto the front porch. The cawing of a startled raven echoed from her tangled mane, turning into a cry: "You're lucky the ground is so soft, ma'am!" Wendy smiled up at the pseudo-nanny, waved, and then YOUTH ROLLED off the threshold.

Falling from the house, Wendy belly flopped and smacked an ear into the ground. The blue grass was as soft as advertised and shards stuck to her clothes as any self respecting grass would. Wendy felt a soft reverberation through the hill but paid little heed to the comparatively excited thudding. She rose to her feet, not knowing that the planetoid's heart was a-flutter at the long awaited appearance of its Master, nor that its metaphorical stomach was full of rambunctious butterflies.

Though the walk to and through the purple fog of peace wasn't particularly long, she was tired because of the trek from the city in her performance ball gown. The sky was gradually darkening as she climbed up the rope ladders. She stifled a yawn as she watched the village’s inhabitants; a number of seemingly caffeinated imps who wore intricately carved bows slung on their backs and hung earrings that were clearly spy cameras from their pointed ears.

An archery practice area was at the edge of town, several elvan imps firing down at small targets on the shifting landscape. Wendy tapped on the shoulder of another observer, seeking a place to lie down.

The amber imp bobbed a quick curtsy before babbling excitedly at the tired cellist. She caught a handful of phrases from the fast-talking little man: 'Your majesty', 'diplomatic tour', 'peace offering', 'village elder'. It was 'finest room' that caught her attention.

"I wouldn't want to fall asleep in front of the elder," Wendy elbowed her way into the monologue. "Could you direct me to a room so I might freshen up?"

***

Venus's entry to the pocket universe introduced more than just amber to the list of building materials. Her ghostly shades made the twin trips to the cities of gold and obsidian, arcs of electricity activating the third tower in each set of six.

Down at the newly spherical planet in the centre of the universe called 'the battlefield' a black sceptre glowed briefly. Its owner was giving a televised speech to the Dersite forces across the battlefield and various boot camps throughout the dark city. The King in his pressed suit urged recruits to sign up to gain the miscellaneous bonuses an army-issued Silver Ring or official kid-sized Half Sceptre could grant.

The shifting transformative power took root as the King activated the orb-covered sceptre, his well-pressed jacket succumbing to the toplessness of the Venus de Milo. For the first time the monarch felt the growth of hair as thick vines shot from his head to grasp the power source from his suddenly-stumpy arms.

The king ended his broadcast with a bellow. "We can't win this war without you!"

***

The White Queen had her own bodily change, the popping sound of her now-nonexistent arms giving pause to the throne rooms many guards. Two continued wheeling in the large device they had been ordered to retrieve, as stopping suddenly could risk an unforseen accident.

Surprising Jokester watched the varying guards nervously as the hated Prophesizer rolled into the court, her silver handcuffs digging uncomfortably into an unarmoured joint on her exoskeleton.

The hulking pitch white machine appeared at first glance to be a ceiling high closet, of the ancient style likely to contain a fantasy universe. Once its forward momentum was as arrested as SJ, the doors were opened and a drawer extruded itself outwards until it was 8 times long as the cabinet was tall. Then more drawers extended from that central pillar to make a square chessboard fit inside a single large drawer.

The closet's payload hovered securely at the ideal shin-bruising height, weighted down by the bulk of the Prophesizer. A thin film of cloudy liquid drained from the main wardrobe into the drawer, filling the chessboard to a finger-high stain.

The queen didn't take her eyes from the jokester, the noblewoman sitting on a plush seat with bound hands in her lap. "We know of your disdain for the battlefield's clouds," began Her Highness. "But it is standard to ask. Was your crime predetermined by a vision?"

SJ watched as a mimicry of the current state of the Medium bubbled up from the prophetic rainwater. "Yes, your majesty." The soap bubble orrery shimmered as the guards prepared to rewind state.

"You caught a glimpse and fought against what you saw?" The monarch wagered.

SJ breathed in and held her breath while she thought, shaking her head. "I was contacted by the Hero of Time."

The queen's eye-mounted camera focused closely at the distressed Prospitian. "She is a Princess of Derse."

The jokester nodded. "Yet she contacted me all the same." A stolen glance at the orrery drew the queen's attention.

"Luckily for you we can seek the origin of beta timelines." The queen smirked, directing the guards at the controls to fill out the known quantities of the six heroes.

"It is lucky!" Cried out the jokester, eyes focused on a time long ago. "I asked her to confirm facts of her session. Before her death!"

WQ allowed a short recess as a guard retrieved a lockbox from the relieved SJ's quarters. Once the box was returned to the jokester she sung a short segment of 'The show must go on' while fiddling with the lock.

She withdrew a large piece of parchment, stained with a large clot of blood at the bottom edge. She relocked the box and stared the queen in the eyes. "For some reason, I was worried that my word wouldn't be enough." Her escort carefully took the parchment and began entering data.

The orrery shifted and twisted, the battlefield's shape taking on a complicated ouroboros. A spare bubble drifted from the prophetic water, showing an empty grave with the Hero of Void's marker on the tombstone.

"One hero never entered," explained the woman on trail. "She knew I could prevent a similar tragedy by waking the male princess." SJ shrugged. "What is an early start on proving his nobility verses a tragic death?"

The queen nodded her head as she kept an eye on the orrery's controls. "You shall not be exiled." She gestured with the ring bearing vine and the Prophesizer purged its data and dropped the bubbles back into the drawer, beginning the slow process of returning to storage.

After a moment reviewing SJ's treasured map, the queen finished her sentence. "You shall instead tutor both princesses and the prince of this moon. All three must be presentable for the Masquerade." The white queen smiled daggers at the jokester. "I've heard my counterpart loves to tango with stilettos on."

The jokester was clearly surprised for once, barely coherent until she had returned to her quarters. As she was putting away the bloodied land map she noticed the queen's handwriting. She had circled one hero's title, the 'Of Time'. Her elegant penmanship read 'Are you sure?'


End file.
